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OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Christianity and Childhood 

Doctrine of the Resurrection 

Reasons for Church Creed 

The Historic Episcopate 

The Incarnation and Recent Criticism 

Judicial Decisions of the General Conference 

The Wingless Hour 



Freedom of Thought 
in Religious Teaching 



By 
R. J. COOKE, D. D., LL. D., 

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church 



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THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

CINCINNATI NEW YORK 

Henry C. Jennings 

George P. Mains Edwin R. Graham John H. Race 

PUBLISHING AGENTS 






Copyright, 1913, by 
The Methodist Book Concern 



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A351002 
H4 



TO MY BELOVED FRIEND 

THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN, THE WISE COUNSELOR, 
THE DEVOTED CHURCHMAN, 



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PREFACE 

In presenting the following pages to the thoughtful 
consideration of those who have at heart and before 
all else the interests of the Redeemer's Kingdom, it 
is earnestly desired that what is written shall not be 
taken as an exhaustive treatment of the subject. Such 
a work, indeed, might well engage the best efforts of 
Christian scholarship, had one the leisure and the cour- 
age for so great an undertaking. But the possibility 
of such a work is beyond me. The incessant demands 
of uncompromising duty in a large and varied field 
leave neither time nor strength for that continuity 
of thought absolutely necessary for such a task. Even 
these few pages could be written only at intervals 
while on long journeys, and had there been to my 
knowledge any work treating directly the distinct and 
specific question here discussed — this particular theme 
within the larger theme of Christian Liberty — these 
pages would not have been written. This brochure, 
therefore, is nothing more than an humble attempt to 
indicate the metes and bounds of Critical Thought 
and Ecclesiastical Authority — a non-partisan attempt 
7 



PREFACE 

at a solution pf a question affecting the peace of the 
Church, a contribution toward the abatement of an- 
tagonism active or suppressed between conservative 
defenders of the Faith and the progressive interpreters 
of the same Divine Revelation. 

The really valuable work, The Principle of Au- 
thority, by Prof. Forsyth, pf Mansfield College, Ox- 
ford; Huffner, on Christian Liberty; Forster's Auc- 
toritat u. Freiheit, and the notable Lectures on Religion 
mid Culture delivered by the late Auguste Sabatier 
at the Religious Science Congress, Stockholm, 1897, 
did not, I regret to say, come into my hands until 
after these pages had been given to the Publishers. 
These works, however, valuable as they are for a gen- 
eral survey of the subject, do not deal specifically with 
the particular phase here treated. Now, whether this 
contribution shall definitely settle any particular diffi- 
culty, or satisfy the intellectual convictions of opposite 
parties, is not a matter of so great moment as that it 
may assist in promoting among reasonable Christians 
the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace. For 
this purpose it was written, and that, under the blessing 
of Him who gave His life for the Church, it may 
accomplish this is the earnest prayer pf the author. 

R. J. C. 



8 



Table of Contents 



I PAGE. 

Preface, Stating Purpose of the Book — Difficulties of the 
Subject — Nonpartisan Method — The Religious Situa- 
tion — Issues Stated — Arguments pro and con 1 1-2 1 

II 

Consequences of Division Seen in Thought Life of the 
People — Alienation of the Intellectual Element from 
Church and Religion — Results Seen in the Life of the 
Masses; Their Possible Attitude to Society — Effect of 
Alienation upon Society and the Progress of the 
Church — Futility of Substitutes of Christianity — the 
Church the Ground for Social Progress — Destructive 
Effect upon the Church within Itself — Modernism — 
Every Age a Modern Age — The Early Fathers — 
Change in Dogmatic Teaching — What is Progress?. . . 22-38 

III 

Attempt at Solution — No Conflict between Truths — 
Draper's Conflict Between Religion and Science — The 
Place of Reason — Definition of Freedom — Freedom of 
Thought — Authority — Erroneous Ideas of its Nature 
and Office — Lord Balfour — The Duty of the Church — 
No Toleration for All Beliefs — Freedom not a Mo- 
nopoly 39-47 

IV 

Scriptural Teaching — Our Lord — The New Testament 
Writers — Acts of the Apostles — Paul — Teaching of the 
Early Church — Pressense Quoted — Ignatius — Papias 
— Pantsenus — Clemens Alexandrinus — Origen — 
Tertullian — Lactantius — The Church a Body of Be- 
lievers, Not a Debating Society — New Testament Age 
a Period of Intellectual Greatness — But Doubt Su- 
preme — Positive Convictions of the Church Con- 
trasted with Philosophic Doubt — Apostolic Solicitude 
for Genuineness of Teaching — The Truth of the Gospel 
Founded on Fact 48-62 

V 

Analogy between that Age and this Life — The Duty of the 
Church in the Present — Arguments Against Dogmatic 
Teaching of the Church — Criticism of the Religion of 
the Spirit — Harnack — Sabatier — Martineau 63-80 

VI 

The Function of the Church — New Testament Documents 
and the Church — Jesus a Fact in History — Verbal Set- 
ting of Church Dogma Variable — Duty of the Church 
Not Exhausted in Office of Teaching; it Must Also 

9 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Guard Those Taught for False Doctrine and Submis- 
sion to Authority, Neither Despotism nor Irrational — 
Analogy from the Social Organism — The Antagonism 
in Man's Nature — Reconciled only in the Church — 
Whatever there Militates Against the Peace of the 
Church, Wars against the Highest Good of the Race — 
Futility of the Attempt to Construct One's Own 
Belief 81-96 

VII 

Larger View of the Church — Error of Forcing the Church 
from its Specific Mission— The Church not a Political 
Society — Its Purpose — This Aim Realized Means So- 
cial Regeneration — The Prime Importance of Defend- 
ing Truths which alone can Truly Regenerate Society 
and make Possible Progress of Civilization 97-99 

VIII 

Rightful Claims of Liberalism — No Church has Authority 
to Prohibit Legitimate Inquiry — Argument in Favor 
of Freedom — Leaders of the Church not Inspired — 
Defects in Their Teaching — Wesley — Augustine — 
Luther — Calvin — The Holy Spirit the Teacher of the 
Church — Argument for Freedom of Criticism Still 
Further Developed by Examples in Textual Criticism 
—Adam Clarke 100-111 

IX 

Difference between Fact and Interpretation of Fact — The 
Right of the Critic to Examine Grounds of Belief — 
The Right to Interpret Includes Right to Investigate — 
Necessity for Higher Scholarship, Owing to Labors of 
Ramsay, Crum, Deissman — No Greek Lexicon up to 
Date — Critics Cause of Much Prejudice against 
Higher Criticism — Condemnation of some Methods — 
Ramsay — Harnack — Results of Criticism — The Right 
to Investigate Involves Freedom of Investigation — 
Criticism]of Prof. Cheyne — Pneiderer — Dangers to the 
Church that Resists Freedom of Investigation 112-130 

X 

The Two Sides Having been Considered, What is the Con- 
clusion? — The Duty of One Face to Face with Truth 
— The Attitude of Methodism — The Example of Wes- 
ley—His Criticism of Church of England Articles — 
Change Views of Ecclesiastical Polity — Apostolic Suc- 
cession Denied — The Balanced Spirit of Wesley — Wes- 
ley no Anarchist — His Reverence for Truth — The 
Methodist Standards of Doctrine— The Methodist 
Episcopal Church not a mere Sect — A Comprehensive 
Church — Its Spirit — Appeal for the Largest Liberty 

and the most Generous Loyalty 131-145 

IO 



Freedom of Thought in Religious 
Teaching 



To The; student of social, political, and religious 
forces in modern life two tendencies, each opposed 
to the other — Authority and Freedom, Collectivism 
and Individualism — stand out distinct from all others. 
To the broadly educated and seriously minded Chris- 
tian who is alive both to the importance of main- 
taining sound doctrine and of encouraging critical 
thought as a necessary condition of progress in scien- 
tific theology, the exercise of ecclesiastical authority 
and the rights and limitations of free thought within 
the Church can not be other than a matter of pro- 
found concern. Many perplexing questions constantly 
arise from the present welter of human thinking and 
arrest our attention. But this is an immediate ques- 
tion; one of which, in the nature of things, some 
understanding must be arrived at before there can 
be any clear conception of the metes and bounds of 
rational inquiry in religious teaching and the limits 
of authority in the Christian Church. 
ii 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

The subject is not an easy one. It is not crystal 
clear to the end. Over it all there hangs a certain 
vagueness often blurring fine lines of distinction and 
boundaries. Nor is it easy in a judicial manner to 
discuss a subject which so quickly awakens prejudice 
and so easily kindles religious animosity, without lay- 
ing one's self open to the invidious criticism of mu- 
tually opposing parties. As a believer in the Historic 
Faith of Christendom — the Faith of the Early Church 
— the Faith of the Martyrs and Confessors who sur- 
rendered their lives for the Gospel — this living Faith 
of the ages which has its roots in the Oracles of God, 
which, in spite of all schisms, in spite of all attacks, 
philosophical, literary, and scientific, still maintains the 
Divine Nature of Jesus Christ, the redeeming power 
of His atonement, the Witness of the Holy Spirit, 
and the Life Eternal, — as a firm believer in this holy 
faith believed in by millions in all ages and by all 
sorts and races of men, I shall be expected, perhaps, 
since I touch the subject at all, to defend the Au- 
thority of the Church, — to show the weakness and 
lawlessness of those who set themselves in opposition 
to it — to exhibit them as old foes with new faces, 
the successors of ancient heretics, the aides and abet- 
tors of Agnostics, Rationalists, High Priests of Skep- 
ticisms — vain men, proud, boastful of their intellectual 
12 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

gifts and attainments, seeking notoriety, enemies of 
the truth, — to show that the program of this Liberal 
Theology, so radical and sweeping, is but an offspring 
of German Rationalism, the first-born of Anti-Christ, 
that the science so proudly vaunted in support of it, 
anti-miraculous, anti-supernatural, anti-Christian, is 
the forerunner of anarchy in the State, the destroyer of 
all dignity in man, of his hope of immortality, of 
his kinship with the eternal. 

Then, perhaps, as a believer in the Divine char- 
acter of truth, I shall be expected to show that truth 
is self-evidencing and needs no external authority; 
that Authority in the Church or in the State which 
needs defense has already lost its defense and its 
power; that all progress in the struggle for human 
rights, and all advancement in intellectual pursuits 
have been struggles against Authority ; that the Church 
must surrender to the spirit of the age; must hold all 
doctrines of Holy Scripture, all questions of Inspira- 
tion, of Miracles, of Prophecy, of the Nature and 
Work of the Lord Jesus, as open questions; that the 
Church must impose no creed; challenge no teaching, 
but must grant widest liberty and equal refuge to 
all men of all opinions. 

One of these two things I may be expected to 
do. But the better way, I think, is to do neither. 
13 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

The difficulties of the task are sufficiently nurnerous 
and sufficiently complex without obscuring the issue 
with partisan judgments. Nevertheless, this should 
be said, that, however difficult the undertaking may 
be, the religious situation of the present demands at 
least a frank discussion of the subject. Even though 
a failure, an honest attempt toward some settlement 
or abatement of the antagonism between Authority 
and Freedom — which continues to divide and weaken 
the forces of religion — may prove helpful in some 
remote way; for at present there is neither content 
in the higher circles of scholarship with the attitude 
of the Church toward the results of Science, nor satis- 
faction among religious leaders relative to the ex- 
pansion of religion and the growth of the Church. 

That antagonism more or less pronounced between 
the Church and so-called Modern Thought does exist 
to the detriment of both will not be denied, nor 
will its effects be ignored. That it can not be very 
well denied is evident from the number and the char- 
acter of publications antagonistic to orthodox faith 
from such notable works as those of Martineau, Sab- 
atier, Harnack, Loisy, Bousset, and other representa- 
tives of Liberalism, to the cheap products of mere 
imitators who cry out in the tones of anarchy against 
14 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

all authority except their own, and seek to modify 
or destroy the Historic Faith. 

That this conflict which we see does exist can not 
be ignored is self-evident. No thoughtful man is 
ignorant of the effect of Modern Thought upon once 
cherished beliefs, or of the inroads scientific investi- 
gations steadily make in the thinking of many in all 
ranks of Christian teachers and believers. 

Judging from the content of theological literature 
we can not be blind to the fact that Christian belief 
in some quarters seems to be in unstable equilibrium. 
As in the political world there is a deep sense of 
change, a loosening of party bonds, a growing con- 
viction that ancient party war-cries have lost their 
authority and their inspiration, so in the world of 
faith there seems to be widespread consciousness of 
a drift from the unquestioning belief of a few genera- 
tions ago to loosely-held opinions; to flaccid assent or 
utter repudiation of dogmatic belief. Patristic the- 
ology and Mediaeval speculations, the entire system 
of belief from Augustine to Calvin, and from Calvin 
to Wesley, no longer commands the assent of all men. 
Physical Science, Commerce, Biblical Criticism, His- 
tory, Philosophy, have done their Providential work. 
They have opened up a larger universe and have 
J 5 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

added vast stores of new knowledge to the already 
accumulated mass. They have created the modern 
interrogative mind. When, therefore, larger views 
of the universe, ideas of law, of evolution, of the 
origin of beliefs, of religious institutions, which the 
new knowledge and the special study of comparative 
religions have introduced, are found to be, or are 
assumed to be, antagonistic to dogmatic faith, or to 
the implications of that faith, it can not be otherwise 
than that there should be religious disturbance, in- 
tellectual discontent, and more or less conflict. "There 
is one fact we can not well overrate," says the late 
Principal Fairbairn, "the state of conflict or mental 
schism in which every devout man, who is also a 
man of culture, feels himself compelled more or less 
consciously to live. His mind is an arena in which 
two conceptions struggle for the mastery, and the 
struggle seems to be so deadly as to demand the death 
of one for the life of the other, faith sacrificed to 
knowledge, or knowledge to faith." (Studies in the 
Philosophy of Religion and History, pp. 61, 62.) 
The result is that the attitude of many thoughtful 
minds is not that of the prophet, "Here am I," but, 
"Where am I?" For such is the constitution of the 
human mind that it can not be satisfied with less than 
unity in its beliefs. Reason can never rest in con- 
16 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

tradictions, which it is assumed the new knowledge 
provokes. Hence the question which confronts us 
is: How to harmonize Modern Culture and the re- 
ligious consciousness. 

The issues also seem to be well understood. Erom 
the standpoint of Authority it is held that the Church 
can neither surrender nor change by a syllable the 
content of the Gospel any more than Science can 
change the facts of the physical universe. The Gospel 
delivered to her keeping is not a product of human 
thought, it is a revelation of God, and therefore, be- 
cause it is a revelation it is not subject to human 
revision. But on the other hand, respecting human 
beliefs, however exact the methods of modern criticism 
may be in formulating them the conclusions reached 
are dependent in the long run for their truthfulness 
upon the soundness of the critic's judgment, upon his 
powers of analysis and synthesis, his temperament, 
gifts philological, historical, critical, or metaphysical; 
his ability to reason through conflicting views, and 
then, after all, there, like a soul of evil in things good, 
is the incalculable element in human thinking which 
may vitiate the whole finding. We should not for- 
get the words of a recent philosopher that "the wisest 
of critics is an altering being, subject to the better 
insight of the morrow, and right at any moment only 
• I 7 



FREEDOM OE THOUGHT 

'up to date/ and, 'on the whole/ " (William James, 
Varieties of Religious "Experience, p. 333.) The most 
thoroughly proved and buttressed theories of one gen- 
eration, it is affirmed, may prove to be entirely wrong 
in another, as well-constructed theories have often 
proved to be in the history of Rationalism, in the 
history of Biblical Criticism, and of Schools of Philos- 
ophy, ancient and modern. Will the Mythical Theory 
of Strauss, for example, or the romantic Life of Jesus, 
of Renan, bear the white light of recent criticism? 
In our own day do we not see the radical differences 
between various Schools of Criticism, between Ma- 
terialism and Idealism, between Idealism and Specu- 
lative Idealism? Each of these philosophies starts 
from seemingly indisputable premises, each premise 
is worked out according to scientific methods, and 
each philosophy is shown with critical exactness to 
be the only scientific solution of the world-mystery. 
Nevertheless, each destroys the other, for they can 
not all be true. "Deists, Pantheists, Agnostics, Pes- 
simists, Atheists, Positivists, and Liberal Theologians 
unceasingly refute each other; and were their re- 
spective opinions put to a vote, out of a dozen sys- 
tems, each would be found in a minority of one, with 
the other eleven against it. If escape were sought 
18 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

in a theoretical skepticism, which despairs of truth 
altogether, this would but add another sect to the 
number, which would encounter the hostility of all the 
rest." (Professor Orr, Christian View of the World, 

p. 37 2 -) 

But, not only in Philosophy in Biblical Criticism, 
also, similar uncertainty often results. What are re- 
garded as incontrovertible deductions from given his- 
torical data by one School of Criticism are vigorously 
repudiated by another. No one, for example, now 
maintains the distinctive teachings of the Tubingen 
School which once dominated many of the foremost 
theologians of Germany, nor are the findings of the 
Welhausen-Graf School of Old Testament Criticism 
which were accepted a generation ago as "assured 
results" held now even by advanced critics just as 
they were first announced. Hence the inflexible atti- 
tude of the Church toward the demands of unbelief. 

From the standpoint of Free-Thought it is main- 
tained that the blunders of Criticism afford no proof 
that the faith of Christendom is in harmony with the 
facts of the universe. The teachings of the Creeds, 
we are told, are no more infallible than are the efforts 
of Criticism to find the truth; and that any attempt 
to repress free inquiry is an exercise of tyranny, justi- 

19 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

fying revolt from all ecclesiastical authority. Joined 
in the same crusade with extreme Rationalists are 
so-called Liberals in theology. These also demand 
reconciliation between Church standards of belief and 
the results of the intellectual advance which has char- 
acterized the last half-century. Critical methods in 
the Study of the Scriptures, Textual Criticism, Com- 
parative Religion, Man's Origin and his Place in the 
Universe in the light of Evolution, Philosophy in 
relation to Theology, Miracles in relation to Natural 
Law, and many other subjects of vital interest to 
religion, have in the judgment of many profoundly 
influenced Theologic Thought and demand new in- 
terpretations of historical facts, new statements of 
doctrine, or of dogmatic teaching, in order to bring 
Christian belief into harmony with scientific inquiry. 
Such is the contention outside the narrow circle 
of Rationalism of many earnest and devout Christian 
scholars. These are not Rationalists. They are not 
Agnostics. They are not religious Anarchists. They 
are Christian men. In order to accomplish the results 
above indicated they demand liberty of thought, liberty 
to challenge the validity of any doctrine, liberty to 
eliminate the wide discrepancy between Scientific Crit- 
icism and Church Creed. They denounce as obscur- 
20 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

antism that exercise of ecclesiastical authority which 
would put a limit to their search for truth or exclude 
them from the body of Christian believers, or from 
the hope and consolation of the Gospel. They stand 
upon what they assert to be their rights to defend 
within the Church the principle of intellectual freedom. 



21 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 



II 

This, then, in general, is the situation, Now that such 
a breach between Reason and Faith works incalculable 
injury to the peaceful progress of thought and the 
authority of religion as represented by the Church is 
evident wherever religion and science come together 
in the thought-life of the people. The human in- 
tellect was made to think. No limits can be estab- 
lished by human authority to its operations. It must 
know. In nothing, except willful sin, does it dis- 
honor its Creator more than in refusing to think, 
that is, in refusing to obey the laws of its own' nature, 
or in stultifying its convictions. The crime against 
truth is not in thinking wrongly, but in refusing to 
think at all. "The ox knoweth his owner, and the 
ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, My 
people doth not consider." (Isaiah 1:3.) When free- 
dom to think is denied, or freedom to think is allowed 
only as the Church dictates to think, alienation from 
that Church, and even from religion itself, becomes 
an almost inevitable result, for where doubt is dom- 
inant faith is impossible. 

But alienation from religion does not end here. 
22 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

Separation of the intellectual element in Society from 
the Church extends rapidly to thoughtless masses of 
the people, who, notwithstanding the stock phrase that 
"the masses are hungry for the Gospel," are ever 
ready, as fallen human nature always is, to find justi- 
fication for their quick surrender to the material, and 
to throw off all restraints imposed upon them by the 
moral spirit of the age. The Christless example of 
the cultured element in modern civilization to the 
millions who look up to them, imitate them, or are 
influenced by them, is one of the gravest dangers to 
modern institutions and constitutes that element a 
most dangerous class, as much as they may be sur- 
prised at it, and as much as they may resent it. No 
more pathetic picture of fallen humanity is seen in 
human history than the revolting degradation of the 
peoples of France and Germany when the intellectual 
classes having abandoned belief in Christianity, the 
masses, as in England also in the eighteenth century, 
plunged into the wildest excesses. In the logic of 
nature, and as all history teaches, this moral degen- 
eracy must certainly be expected. To the philosopher 
its arrival will occasion no surprise, and to the moralist 
it will present no problem. For, if, as in the minds 
of many, Religion is superstition and the Church is 
an imposition, what reason is there in the nature of 
23 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

things why every man following the impulse of his 
instincts should not do as he pleases? What argu- 
ment is there addressed to Reason strong enough to 
convince us that the individual should be subordinated 
to Society? Certainly, we may teach that the indi- 
vidual can reach his highest development only in and 
as a member of the social organism, and that there 
can be no social progress without the subordination 
of individual interests to the interests of the whole, 
but why should the individual seek such development 
at such cost as is involved in such a struggle as social 
membership demands ? Why, on any rational ground, 
should he sacrifice himself to the interests of Society, 
or to the progress of Society in a future in which 
he will have no part, when he can enjoy himself in 
the present, which is all he has, and let the future 
take care of itself? Science may assume that he 
does not do this willingly, but that in unconscious 
obedience to a social instinct, that is, in general, to the 
laws of evolution which operate in all realms of life, 
the individual is caught up in the sweep of cosmic 
law. But, being a reasoning being and not unreason- 
ing as are the lower forms of life, and is, therefore, 
able by exercising his reason to resist this law, why 
does he not resist? Why does he not follow Rous- 
seau's advice to fall back into primitive savagery, and, 
24 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

in obedience to the primitive law of self-preservation, 
sink himself in the beast for present enjoyment? If 
the Utilitarian philosopher tells us that this subordina- 
tion is for the greater good or happiness of the whole, 
the question immediately arises, Whose happiness? 
Must the rich and cultured elements of Society for- 
ever walk on the high places, the poor and the un- 
fortunate always remain at the foot? What rational 
sanction is there for the subordination of the indi- 
vidual man to the interests of generations yet un- 
born? It is useless, as it is illogical, to discant for 
our own safety, against the evils we have generated, 
on the Gospel of Utilitarianism, to philosophize on 
natural religion, or to preach with oratorical fervor 
on the Brotherhood of Man. There is no brother- 
hood in barbarism, or in that society, if such it may 
be called, where God is denied or deliberately ignored, 
that is, where supernatural or religious sanctions are 
set aside, as Mr. Herbert Spencer does in his Data of 
Ethics, and where human nature is allowed unre- 
stricted sway. Equality and Fraternity sounded well 
enough and promised much in the philosophy of 
French infidels before the horrors of the Revolution 
familiarized the people with blood and debauchery, 
but such pretty terms proved to be of very little value 
when the Reign of Terror set every man in defense 
25 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

of his life against the life of every other man. Let 
us not deceive ourselves. Never yet was a State held 
together by abstractions. Words are not things. 
From natural necessity religious beliefs and moral 
ideas found their way in primitive times into laws 
and statutes which became the religion of the gens, 
or of the tribe, or of the State. Even then such be- 
liefs, however crude or false they may have been, 
could never have made possible a State had it not 
been that those beliefs were believed to be sanctioned 
by the gods, that is, at last, because of a dominating 
belief in the supernatural. Every nation in history 
rested on its religion, and as that religion gradually 
lost its original vigor or influence, the nation became 
enfeebled with it and with it passed away. What 
has been will be, for the reason that in such a fate is 
a law of nature. The nations that forget God shall 
perish. This is the Biblical, the religious side of it, 
but the scientific side of it presents the same con- 
clusion. Benjamin Kidd clearly shows (Social Evo- 
lution, p. 263) that "the evolution that is slowly pro- 
ceeding in human society is not primarily intellectual, 
but religious in character/' This means that the races 
which win out in the struggle for the survival of 
the fittest are just those races which have the highest 
ethical character, and therefore the unethical or God- 
26 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

less race, or nation, is fighting against the inexorable 
laws of nature. "The stars in their courses fought 
against Sisera." The nation without a religion must 
therefore necessarily perish. The more ethical a na- 
tion is, the better is its chance in the struggle for 
existence. Not natural religion, but supernatural re- 
ligion, is the cohering bond of Society. 

Now, on the other hand, if this alienation of the 
educated and influential classes from the Church is 
contrary to the well-being of the State, it is also detri- 
mental to the vitality of religion, to the authority and 
even existence of the Church as an organized insti- 
tution. The Church can not, and never was intended 
to, exist for itself. It is not an end in itself, but is 
a means to a larger end. If it is the Church of God 
it must be the Church of Humanity. But in order 
to become this in fact, as well as in idea, it must 
embrace Humanity. By this it is not meant that it 
must accept humanity en bloc, its groping philosophies, 
false religions, fruitless aims, and inane purposes 
which center in mere culture for purely intellectual 
pleasure, or for art's sake. Nor do I mean its identifi- 
cation or alignment with the world in the sense that 
in any degree the Church should give its endorsement 
to the spirit of the world, its manifold inanities, greed, 
Epicureanism, and all things that make for the gratifi- 
27 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

cation of the flesh on the ground that by insisting 
on a rigorous ascetic life, or even a life of restraint, 
the world is alienated from the Church. Of course 
it is, and the more alienated the better, the better 
for the Church, and in the long run, the better for 
the world, for it is only by contrast with the Church 
that the world will ever become conscious of itself 
as the world. In the Fourth Century the Church 
surrendered to the world, and the world has never 
yet been wholly eradicated from it. But what is 
meant by embracing the world, is that the Church 
must identify itself with humanity, in its best moods 
and highest endeavors, inspiring it in all its aspira- 
tions for Justice, and in politics, social and commercial 
life, stimulating and guiding it in truth and in all 
its efforts to realize the Good which we instinctively 
feel to be the fundamental reason, the root idea of 
the universe, or as Saint Paul conceives it, "The 
purpose of the ages." For, there is undoubtedly a 
definite goal toward which humanity moves, otherwise 
human history is without purpose, and the whole 
evolutionary process so appalling in its vastness and 
moral grandeur is after all nothing but "an idiot's 
tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing," a 
movement without teleological idea or directive force, 
which is only to say that the universe is irrational, 
28 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

a conclusion itself irrational. Now, this impulse 
toward a realization of the Good is created by dis- 
content with existing conditions, Political, Economic, 
Social, or Religious. Indeed, the entire history of 
humanity may be conceived in the one word, "Dis- 
content." It is the push outward of the human spirit 
to larger worlds, the desire of the race soul to transcend 
its present limitations and to realize the Good, how- 
ever vaguely that Good or that larger life may be 
considered. This instinctive desire for progress mani- 
fests itself in social outbreaks, in political revolutions, 
in literature, art, and science; in the breaking down 
of barriers and changing of conditions, for the grow- 
ing life within must find expression of itself outwardly ; 
must have room in which to exercise its powers and 
find itself in the struggle for the Ideal, and it is with 
this struggle of the human to realize itself that the 
Church must find itself in complete sympathy. 

Furthermore, a primary condition of all true prog- 
ress is spiritual motive. As motive is, life is. Science, 
Art, Law, Commerce, Politics, or other creations of 
the human spirit are not in themselves spiritualizing 
forces. Otherwise the Art of the Greek and the Law 
of the Roman would long since have redeemed hu- 
manity; nor can they be unless they are vitalized by 
the Eternal Spirit. However lofty the reach of the 
29 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

human intellect, and however marvelous the progress 
of the race in material things, discoveries, inventions, 
adaptations of physical science to social comforts and 
refinements of luxury, commercial expansion, Poli- 
tics, Music, Literature, and Art, that progress of what- 
ever kind it is which is without the spiritual is still 
on the dead level of the human and can never lift 
itself above the human, "That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit." If the human race has made any real prog- 
ress it is because religion has persisted through all 
political and social changes in the history of the race, 
eliminating the animal, restraining the barbaric, direct- 
ing influences, creating currents of thought and new 
ideals, re-molding customs, establishing institutions, 
and sustaining governments by its mighty sanctions. 
"The two great forming agencies in the world's his- 
tory," says Professor Alfred Marshall (Principles of 
Economics, London), "have been the religious and 
the economic. Here and there the ardor of the mili- 
tary or the artistic spirit has been for awhile promi- 
nent, but religious and economic influences have 
nowhere been displaced from the front rank even for 
a time and they have nearly always been more im- 
portant than all others put together." If modern 
comforts, inventions, and luxuries were the evidences 
30 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

of true progress, Plato would stand below the modern 
machinist in the scale of development. But true 
progress does not lie that way. "Man does not live 
by bread alone." True progress is spiritual, not ma- 
terial. Real culture is within, not without. Culture 
is in the realm of spirit. Now, Christianity alone 
supplies sufficient motive for the highest civilization. 
It is the motive power of progress. This is a large 
statement. But so recent a thinker as Rudolph Eucken 
in his Problem of Human Life, pp. 141, 142, may be 
quoted to the same effect, when he says : "This is 
especially evident when we compare the philosophers 
of the declining period of antiquity with the earlier 
Church Fathers. The philosophers far surpass the 
latter in the perfection of form, in the analysis of 
conceptions, indeed in the whole matter of theoretical 
demonstration. But upon all their work there weighs 
the fatal consciousness of the emptiness and worth- 
lessness of human existence. It prevented them from» 
putting forth strength and forbade all dedication to 
high aims. It is therefore perfectly intelligible that 
the victory fell to the Church Fathers who had a new 
life, a great future to offer, and who could summon 
men to triumphant, joyous activity, and to positive 
happiness." To the impulse of a new life which Chris- 
tianity gave the world, to the preaching pf new ideals 
3i 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

created by its Divine Founder every student of human 
progress must attribute in large measure the height 
of civilization to which we have attained. The re- 
form of Roman law under Justinian; the sanctity of 
Marriage, the end of feudal wars, the humanizing 
of laws and social conditions in the Middle Ages; 
and in the Modern Period such moral advances as 
the abolition of slavery, arbitration, the elevation of 
woman, international law, the multiplication of hu- 
mane institutions, and the growth of political ideas 
which have made possible the enlarged conceptions of 
human rights and individual values and of the moral 
character of the State must all be attributed to that 
initial impulse. 

Does religion afford less motive now? Experi- 
encing in our own day the results of Christian in- 
fluence upon human thought and conduct for twenty 
centuries, we can not deny that behind all other forces 
working in the social evolution of the race Chris- 
tianity is the most effective. But if the Church fails 
to work in the service of humanity by co-operating 
with it, but sets itself in indiscriminate war against 
it, against its Science, its Politics, its Freedom, its Art 
and its Literature which afford a field for the ex- 
pression of its innermost thought and feeling; if it 
fails to furnish motive for progress, but plays the 
32 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

part of the Roman Church in France before the Revo- 
lution which, as Carlyle says, was like a fat ox tied 
up to the stall waiting to be fed, if it fails to under- 
stand or to spiritualize these creations or activities of 
the human spirit and to direct them to their true and 
final purpose, but on the contrary endeavors to limit 
them or to suppress them,, it is evident that in so 
doing the Church will not only lose Humanity which 
will go its own way, but will also limit itself, and 
thus destroy itself, for the Church of God can only 
advance with the advance of Humanity. 

No evil ends with itself. Not only does a Church 
which declines to identify itself with the noblest en- 
deavors of the race fail by reason of that blunder to 
enlarge the area of its influence in regenerating So- 
ciety; it must on the same principle also resist all 
growth from within itself, a condition which we see 
at the present time the Roman Church is in by the 
operation of this very law. Unused powers die out. 
"To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken 
even that which he hath." Such a Church is com- 
pelled, therefore, by its own act to think the same 
thought from age to age, notwithstanding the increase 
of human knowledge through the presence of God 
in human history. The result slowly reached, per- 
3 33 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

haps, but nevertheless inevitable, must be either revo- 
lution and reformation, or surrender to intellectual 
stagnation. The truth of this observation is seen in 
the present intellectual revolt known as Modernism 
in the Church of Rome. The ultra-conservatism which 
refused all inquiry and simply demanded unques- 
tioning obedience to traditional teaching, dogmatic 
and historical, in the teeth of modern scholarship has 
at last produced the reaction which was sure to come. 
The result is that eminent scholars in all fields of 
research in England, Italy, Germany, and France have 
been compelled in self-defense to expose the stagnant 
condition of religious thought in that Church and its 
irreconcilable attitude toward the spirit of progress. 
Modernism as represented by the Abbe Loisy, Le Roy, 
and many co-workers will not awaken abounding 
enthusiasm among Protestants who believe in the 
Historic Faith, but this will not prevent them from 
recognizing the folly of a Church which seeks to 
destroy erroneous teachings by condemnation rather 
than by refutation. No living thing can live on itself. 
No Church can live on the Scriptural interpretations 
or theological definitions of other ages, determined as 
those interpretations and definitions were by the philo- 
sophical or scientific conceptions of those times. There 
is a fidelity which is infidelity — a fidelity to the past 
34 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

which is treason both to the past and to the present. 
Neither the teachings of the Lord Jesus as interpreted 
by the Ante-Nicene Fathers, nor the purposes of the 
Church as interpreted by the ecclesiastical courtiers 
of the Emperor Constantine, can be standards for all 
time. The truth of God is here and now. Every age 
is a modern age, and every age is a Patristic age. 
Every age must interpret the truth for itself in the 
light of its own knowledge. This does not mean, of 
course, that we must necessarily discard or ignore 
apprehensions of truth which former ages climbed up 
to. Nor does it mean, on the other hand, that we 
should repudiate the progress which humanity has 
made and go back for instruction to> uninspired men 
who had not the faintest glimmerings of what science 
and history and the Christian experience of twenty 
centuries have to teach the modern mind. It is some- 
times said if the early Fathers of the Christian Church 
suddenly came to life in our day they would not be 
able to discern clearly their ancient forms of belief 
in our diversified theology, a statement which is doubt- 
less true, but which is wholly inconsequential; for 
there is little or nothing in the attitude of those early 
Fathers toward progress of Christian thought to war- 
rant the assumption that if they had continued to 
live through all the progressive changes of theologic 
35 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

thought from their day to ours, as we can from our 
standpoint, they would discard the result of those 
changes and cling to their former modes of thought, 
any more than that they would discard our higher 
conceptions of the universe and the rich content of 
the Christian revelation unfolded to us by centuries 
of patient thought and holy experience. Was there 
not a vast difference between the Predestination doc- 
trine of Augustine and that of the early Fathers? 
When his Treatise on Correction and Grace reached 
the Christians in Gaul many who lived in Marseilles 
wrote to him and declared his doctrine unscriptural 
and novel; "we never so much as heard of it before." 
The only reply Augustine could make was his in- 
ference from certain other teachings of the Church, 
which if true made his doctrine true also. Augustine 
believed that he saw more clearly than the Fathers 
the content of the Pauline teaching, and therefore did 
not in his controversy with Pelagius rely solely upon 
former teachings of the Church from which nothing 
pertinent could be obtained because "She was not wont 
to bring forward, in preaching, the doctrine of Pre- 
destination, because, formerly, there were no adver- 
saries to answer." Why should this modern age, 
then, go back to the early Fathers for their views 
on subjects of which they were totally ignorant? 

36 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

And would the Greek Fathers with their doctrine of 
synergism discern clearly their theology in the mon- 
ergism of Augustine? Why, then, should it be neces- 
sary for the early Fathers to find all their beliefs in 
the theology of the present? Even the creeds of the 
Post-Reformation Churches have undergone change. 
Under the influence of Methodism, than which as a 
theological solvent of unscriptural teaching and theo- 
logical crochets and vagaries no other Church has done 
more to modify certain beliefs, what has become, for 
instance, of the once dominant Calvinism, that Cal- 
vinism which consigned non-elect infants to Hell, 
which limited the atonement, and turned over millions 
of humanity to the "uncovenanted mercies" of God? 
Change is a law of life. We grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ. But true growth 
conserves the past while appropriating the present and 
reaching for the future. "In a tree the real life from 
the roots is found in the present new layer. The solid 
stem of deadwood which defies the storm is formed 
by the earlier growths. The leaves and fruitage of 
past years help toward the year's fruitage only as 
they fall to the ground and form soil for the roots, 
while the slight annular growth has increased its girth, 
height, and solidity. Holding all these in the embrace 
of its newest layer gives it expansion as well as 
37 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

strength. Hence the first law for the newly sprouting 
ring is really to embrace and enfold all its prede- 
cessors. Secondly; to grow from the roots upwards 
semi-independently." (Hartman's Philosophy of the 
Unconscious. Notes by Professor Sterrett.) Hence, 
Intellectual freedom is essential to religion. 



38 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 



III 

What, then, is the solution? Is reconciliation pos- 
sible between Freedom and Faith? Or, Is there no 
solution of the problem] without killing it by denying 
the rights of Criticism or the Authority of dogma? 
We think there is. To our thinking it can not be that 
antagonism between true Faith and Freedom has at 
the heart of things any real ground for existence. 
The opposite, of course, is insisted upon by those 
who do not believe in the Christian Revelation. But 
we do not have to recognize their contention. Such 
conceptions of Freedom and of Faith as are repre- 
sented by such one-sided works as Draper's History 
of the Conflict Between Religion and Science can not 
be recognized as having any authoritative value in 
such a discussion. The arguments presented in such 
books with so much assurance are usually as illogical 
as they are inapposite. They are just as valid argu- 
ments against the constitution of Nature as they are 
against Religion or true intellectual freedom. Pro- 
fessor Draper, for instance, tells us that "A Divine 
Revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contra- 
diction; it must repudiate all improvement on itself 
39 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

and view with disdain that arising from the pro- 
gressive intellectual development of man." All of 
which no doubt is very true, but at the same time all 
of which is just as true of Arithmetic as it is of Reve- 
lation. Must we, therefore, discard Arithmetic ? And, 
since Divine Revelation is that which unaided reason 
could not discover, how can unaided reason improve 
upon it? Furthermore, if reason could not discover 
the content of Revelation because it is above reason, 
how is it conceivable that reason should be able to 
add to that content or to subtract from it? For, 
clearly if reason could do either then Revelation 
would not be above reason but within the reach of 
reason, and thus would be no Revelation at all. Then, 
is Chemistry tolerant of contradiction? Are any of 
Nature's laws tolerant? The Universe is not a house 
divided against itself. It is a unit. No truth can 
contradict another truth. No Revelation of God can 
be contrary to reason since God is the primal postu- 
late of reason. It belongs only to the feeblest order 
of intellect to imagine that because some statement 
or doctrine of Scripture is incomprehensible to reason 
it is therefore contrary to reason. It is just as in- 
fantile to assert that the authority of dogma renders 
reason useless, since it is only by the exercise of reason 
that dogma itself is formulated or understood. For, 
40 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

as Bishop Butler says, "Reason is the only faculty 
we have wherewith to judge anything, even Revela- 
tion itself." (Analogy, Part III, 3.) And with Chill- 
ing-worth we may say, "For my part I am certain 
that God hath given us our reason to discern between 
truth and falsehood; and he that makes not this use 
of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say 
it by chance that he believes the truth, and not by 
choice." There is a vast difference between Reason 
and ratiocination which some writers not altogether 
analytical in their thinking nor precise in their selec- 
tion of exact terms to express their ideals fail to ob- 
serve. 

The first question, then, that presents itself is, 
What is Freedom? We shall make the task easier 
and insure clearness of understanding if at the be- 
ginning we rule out from) our definition all mere 
license in thinking, that reckless play of imagination 
which submits to no law of logical thought. In the 
abstract, all thought is free. The mind is free to 
wander at will through all worlds and explore all 
spaces. Nothing can fetter its activity. Stretched 
on a rack, tied to a stake, or immured in a dungeon, 
the victim of tyranny may still exult in that mental 
freedom which no power can limit. Thought is free. 
But action is not free, and it is thought in action which 
4i 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

as a product of the will has in it a moral element, 
that is meant by freedom, or lawfulness of thought. 
Now, no sane person will contend that all action is 
free, that is, all actions are lawful. One is not free 
to slander his neighbor; one is not free to publish a 
libel. The astronomer is not free; that is, he has no 
scientific right to construct a universe out of his inner 
consciousness and insist that his pipe-dream is the 
universe about us; nor is the physician free to kill 
as many people as he may on the ground that his 
theory of medicine is correct. If one, again, adopts 
a certain philosophy, say the Hegelian, and straight- 
way attempts to reconstruct the history of a people, 
for example, the 'Hebrew people, in harmony with that 
philosophy, rather than construct his philosophy from 
the facts, that is not freedom of thought. It seems 
to be more like the license of poetic imagination. No 
one is free to do as he pleases, for the reason that 
"doing as one pleases" is not freedom, that is, it is 
not lawful unless he pleases to do right. No one has 
the right to do wrong. Freedom is conformity. 
Thought must fit fact. But lawless thinking disre- 
gards facts. It is anarchy, that is, without a guiding 
principle, conformable to no law. There is nothing 
to prevent a lunatic from thinking, but he has no 
freedom in his thinking. Freedom is conformity to 
42 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

fact, so that only in obedience to law, whether laws 
of thought or laws of society, is there true freedom 
of thought, that is, of thought in action. 

Should one, however, set forth his hypothesis as 
an hypothesis, or announce as tentative such an in- 
terpretation of historical fact which mjay be contrary 
to and even subversive of established beliefs, he is, 
nevertheless, exercising true freedom, however dis- 
turbing to our conservatism or prejudices his daring 
may be, and however mistaken he may prove to be 
in his theory. His hypothetical constructions of his- 
tory or interpretations of doctrine are not masquerad- 
ing in the stolen garments of reality. If, on the con- 
trary, it is asserted that one has the right to publish 
or teach as fact anything he pleases, and we should 
apply such a doctrine, "Do as you please," to social 
or national life, the nation or community permitting 
it would soon cease to exist; incontrovertible proof 
that the doctrine is wrong. Nature's penalty for 
violation of the laws of freedom is extinction of free- 
dom. Freedom is the rightful exercise of one's powers. 
"The freedom to do what the law permits." (Montes- 
quieu's Esprit des Lois, Book II, p. 3.) 

Second, What is Authority ? It has come to pass, 
somehow, that Authority is assumed to be synonymous 
with restraint, something that is opposed to reason; 
43 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

that reason is always right, and Authority probably 
always wrong; that it is the refuge of conservatives 
and the enemy of progress. "The current theory," 
says Lord Balfour (Foundations of Belief, pp. 203, 
204), "by which these views" (such as are stated 
above) "are supported appears to be something of 
this kind. Any one has a 'right' to adopt any opinions 
he pleases. It is his duty 'before exercising this' right 
critically to shift the reasons by which such opinions 
may be supported, and so to adjust the degree of his 
convictions that they shall accurately correspond with 
the evidences adduced in their favor. Authority, 
therefore, has no place among legitimate causes of 
belief. If it appears among them it is an intruder 
to be jealously hunted down and mercilessly expelled. 
Reason and reason alone can. be safely permitted to 
molest the convictions of mankind. By its inward 
counsels should beings who boast that they are ra- 
tional submit to be controlled. Sentiments like these 
are among the commonplaces of political and social 
philosophy. Yet, looked at scientifically, they seem 
to me to be not merely erroneous, but absurd." He 
then proceeds to show the absurdity of rejecting 
Authority and Religion wholly on subjective judg- 
ments. 

Authority is not arbitrary exercise of ignorance. 
44 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

Authority is collective reason. The corporate reason 
of scientists is authority in Science, of artists in the 
realm of Art. The corporate reason of the Church 
is authority in the religion taught by the Church. It 
is quite true that the corporate reason of the Church 
when engaged in construction of dogma, or when it 
steps beyond its legitimate sphere, may go wrong. 
The Church is not omniscient. It is not infallible. 
Churches have erred. Councils have erred. Con- 
demned heretics have been right and the Church that 
condemned them wrong. But all this is equally true 
of Science. Do we scout the authority of Science 
because scientific experts fail to explain rightly the 
phenomena of the Universe — the facts which they 
present? An erroneous interpretation of a Scientific 
fact does not destroy the fact, and a false theology 
built about religious truth does not invalidate that 
truth, whatever it may do for its dogmatic exposition. 
The facts accepted by scientists are the reasons for 
their collective belief. The facts accepted by the 
Church constitute the grounds for its reasoned teach- 
ings. These facts are contained in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, especially the life and teachings of the Lord 
Jesus, the doctrines taught by the teachers of the 
Church, and the experience of the body of believers. 
Facts in Nature supported by scientists in every coun^ 
45 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

try constitute our body of scientific belief, and the 
teachings of scientific experts is sufficient authority 
for that belief. Certainly there is a difference be- 
tween belief in physical facts and belief in the con- 
tent of Christian creed, but the difference is such as 
must necessarily exist when dissimilar things are com- 
pared. If we compare things that are similar, facts 
of faith with facts of psychology or the world of 
thought which we accept but can not prove for our- 
selves as we prove physical facts by experiment in a 
laboratory, we shall see that the testimony of the 
Church is as valid and therefore as authoritative in 
its sphere as is the concensus of scientists in the world 
of physics. 

The function of Authority in the Church is not, 
as some suppose, to stifle truth, but to protect truth. 
Authority in the State enacts laws for the protection 
of the State. It prohibits certain things because in 
its collective reason such things are judged to be harm- 
ful, and it permits other things because they pro- 
mote the interests of the State. In the Church the 
function of Authority is to prohibit what in its judg- 
ment is detrimental to the well-being and mission of 
the Church. It must also protect those who belong 
to the Church in the undisturbed possession of the 
truth they have accepted, otherwise it ceases to be 

4 6 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

a Church, as a State ceases to be a State when it proves 
powerless to enforce its laws. 

In pursuance of this duty the Church must of 
necessity guard against all innovations upon the truth, 
just as Science is intolerant of quackery. There is 
nothing so intolerant as fact. Those who have ac- 
cepted the truth of God from any Church have the 
right to be protected in that truth and to protest 
against that truth being adulterated or destroyed. No 
Church can exist which guarantees equal freedom to 
all faiths or philosophical notions that may creep into 
its fold. Of course, if there is no> positive truth in 
religion, and one creed is as good as another, all 
equally useful and all, perhaps, equally false, why 
have any religion at all ? Is opinion religion ? Truth 
is more valuable than freedom. Freedom of thought, 
however, speaking of it now in its popular sense, is 
not a monopoly, as it is quietly assumed by those who 
are opposed to the teachings of the Church. Such 
freedom, it should not be forgotten, belongs also* to 
the Church which has the same right to reject the 
teachings of its opponents as they claim to have to 
criticise or reject the tenets of the Church. 



47 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 



IV 

But in order to find even yet more solid ground for 
reconciliation it may be well to consider the teach- 
ings of our Lord, and of His Apostles, and of the 
Early Church. I know not where else to look for 
a standard to which our conduct in such matter may 
be conformed with any feeling of certitude. Now, 
study of the Gospels shows clearly that while our 
Divine Lord appealed to the faith faculty in men, 
He always appealed to men's reason as a ground of 
faith. "Search the Scriptures," said He, that is, crit- 
ically judge their meaning and content, "for in them 
ye think ye have eternal life," and determine for your- 
selves in the light of your own reason the truthful- 
ness of My claims. Evidence, by the way, that our 
Lord knew that the Old Testament certified of Him 
whether His opponents found Him there or not. 

Again, there were those so blinded by prejudice 
that they would not reason. "O ye hypocrites, ye 
can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern 
the signs of the times?" (Matthew 16:3.) He re- 
buked those who would not exercise reason in re- 
ligion, but depended on the evidences of their senses. 

48 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

"Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." 
(John 4:48.) On another occasion when the Phari- 
sees and Sadducees propounded a question to Him, 
He said, Why do ye not judge these things among 
yourselves? It is in harmony with the fitness of 
things that the Incarnated Logos should declare that 
in truth alone is true freedom, whether moral or intel- 
lectual, and that "therefore if the truth shall make you 
free ye shall be free indeed." In that mighty saying 
of Jesus, "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's," all modern civil and religious freedom have 
their birth. It has given Divine sanction to all strug- 
gles for liberty. It has been both doctrine and in- 
spiration to every age. 

In the Apostle Paul we have the same teaching. 
No one in any age before or since ever stood more 
staunchly for liberty of thought in religion than did 
this champion of the faith. This is the same great 
thinker who changed his entire intellectual and moral 
attitude toward new truth, who revised his whole 
system of Rabbinical Theology, flung away his racial 
prejudices, and even withstood Peter to his face in 
defense of the religious freedom of Gentile Christians 
at Antioch. With convincing reason based on the 
alternative — Christ or Moses — he resented in that 
great debate the illogical position of Peter and the 
4 49 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

heresy-hunting assiduity of "false brethren unawares 
brought in who come in privily to spy out our liberty 
which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring 
us into bondage; to whom we gave place by subjec- 
tion, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel 
might continue with you." "Stand fast therefore," 
he writes bravely to the Galatian Christians, "Stand 
fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you 
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of 
bondage.' , (Galatians 2:4.) In the Epistle to the 
Romans the same principle is affirmed, and is there 
practically applied in the Discipline of the Church. 
"Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not 
to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he 
may eat all things; and another that is weak eateth 
herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth 
not ; and let not him which eateth not judge him that 
eateth; for God hath received him." (Chapter 14. 
See also 1 Corinthians 10.) Freedom of Thought is 
also asserted in the declaration concerning Holy Days. 
"One man esteemeth one day above another; another 
esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully 
persuaded in his own mind." (Chapter 14: 5.) Thus 
it is clear that the principle of liberty was recognized 
both by our Divine Lord and, on the foundation of 
His teachings, by His greatest Apostle. 
5o 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

The same assertion of this Divine right is seen 
in the teachings of His disciples and in the attitude 
of the Apostles toward the Jewish hierarchy, even 
before the conversion of Paul. Arrested for preach- 
ing, Peter and John are brought before the Council 
and are "commanded not to speak at all nor teach 
in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered 
and said unto them whether it be right in the sight 
of God to hearken unto you more than unto God 
judge ye. For we can not but speak the things we 
have seen and heard." (Acts 4: 19, 20.) The spirit 
of inquiry among the Berean converts is mentioned 
with approval by Luke, the historian of the Acts. 
"These were more noble than those of Thessalonica 
in that they received the word with all readiness of 
mind and searched the Scriptures daily whether those 
things were so." (Acts 17: 11.) Paul, it will be re- 
membered, has stern words in Romans for those who 
suppress — Karexw — the truth: and Peter, so far from 
repressing inquiry, exhorts those he is writing to "to 
be ready always to give an answer to every man that 
asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with 
meekness and fear." (1 Peter 3: 15.) 

In the Early Church this same principle was recog- 
nized. Of that early period Pressense says: "We 
must ever bear in mind that if the Church of this 
5i 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

age prepared the way for the triumph of hierarchy, 
it did not itself come under the yoke; that it still 
enjoyed a time of true liberty in which the unity of 
the faith laid no fetters upon diversity of opinions 
and free inquiry. There were still broad lines of 
distinction between East and West, and no necessity 
was felt for effacing these distinctions or enforcing 
the adoption of a uniform symbol of faith. Full 
scope was given for the various individualities which 
found bold and broad expression within the Church. 
External restraint only tends to add force to that re- 
action of thought and feeling which is the sublime 
vindication of the soul under any despotism whatso- 
ever. The martyr-theologians of the third century 
are not the faded copies of one and the same doctrinal 
type forcibly impressed upon the mind by a mechanical 
process. All acknowledging with equal reverence the 
authority of the Divine Master, they have no hesita- 
tion in preserving intact the independence of Christian 
thought. They move at liberty within a broad area 
of doctrine, from which nothing is excluded but 
avowed heresy." {Martyrs and Apologists. English 
Translation, p. 262.) 

This characterization of the Early Church is fully 
sustained by the writings of the Apologists who had 
occasion at all to assert the principle of freedom. The 
5 2 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

freshness of the morning filled believers with holy joy 
in the experience of faith. Life's emphasis was placed 
not on metaphysical disquisitions, but on what they 
had seen and felt. Even the sacred Scriptures were 
sometimes subordinated, or rather the interpretation 
of them, to experience. Ignatius says : "When I 
heard some saying, If I do not find it in the ancient 
Scriptures I will not believe the Gospel; on my say- 
ing to them, It is written, they assured me, That re- 
mains to be proved. But to me Jesus Christ is in the 
place of all that is ancient; His cross and death and 
resurrection and the faith that is by Him are unde- 
filed monuments of antiquity." (Ep. to the Phil., 
Shorter Recension, Chap. VIII.) The Larger Recen- 
sion reads : "For I have heard some saying, If I do 
not find the Gospel in the archives, I will not believe 
it — to such persons I say that my archives are Jesus 
Christ. . . . My authentic archives are His cross 
and death and resurrection. He who disbelieves the 
Gospel disbelieves everything along with it. For the 
archives ought not to be preferred to the Spirit." 

Papias, a hearer of John, and friend of Polycarp, 
according to Irenseus, writes, "If, then, any one who 
had attended on the Elders came, I asked minutely 
after their sayings — what Andrew or Peter said, or 
what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, 
53 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the 
Lord's disciples, which things Aristion and the pres- 
byter John the disciples of the Lord say. For I 
imagined that what was to be got from books was 
not so profitable to me as what came from the living 
abiding voice." (Eitscb. Hist. Bcclcs. C. Ill, jp.) 

Pantaenus, the head of the celebrated Catechetical 
School in Alexandria, and his pupil Clemens Alex- 
andrinus, Christian philosophers, versed in all the 
philosophies and religions of Paganism, respected the 
reason they appealed to in their defense of the Gospel. 
Heracles, the colleague of Origen, Origen himself, and 
Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, also maintained the 
right of free inquiry though living in a period of 
transition when, owing to the increase of heretical 
sects, who then as now abused the rights of freedom, 
the Church began to limit the bounds of speculation. 
The historical fact is that, before Constantine came to 
the throne and the Church was united with the State 
freedom of conscience was demanded by the Fathers. 

The Fathers of the Christian Church were the 
founders of religious liberty. These champions of 
intellectual and religious freedom were too consistent 
to deny in the Church what they demanded from the 
State. In his Apology addressed to the Roman rulers 
Tertullian says, "For see that you do not give further 
54 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

ground for the charge of irreligion by taking away- 
religious liberty and forbidding free choice of Deity, 
so that I may no longer worship according to my 
inclination, but am compelled to worship against it." 
And in his Treatise, Ad Scapalum, C. 2, he says 
further: "It is a fundamental right, a privilege of 
nature, that every man should worship according to 
his own conscience. One man's religion neither harms 
nor helps another. It is assuredly no part of religion 
to compel religion — nee religionis est eogere re- 
ligionem — to which free will and not force should 
lead us." Even Athanasius, the adversary of Arius, 
(Hist, of the Avians, 39), declared that is proof that 
men have no confidence in their own faith when they 
compel others to think as they do. And Lactantius, 
the Cicero among the Christian writers of that age, 
in a most eloquent passage, (Inst it. Div. V. 20), says, 
"Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion, 
in which the mind of the worshiper is disinclined to it, 
religion is at once taken away and ceases to exist." 
"The whole of the Patristic period," says Illingworth, 
{Reason and Revelation, p. 4), "was one of intel- 
lectual activity in which the leading Christian thinkers 
were not only fearless in their use of reason, but pro- 
foundly convinced that their position was intrinsically 
rational." 

55 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

Such, then, are the Scriptural and historical 
grounds for the reconciliation we hope to find. They 
confirm the belief that variation in thought, weak- 
ness in faith, doubt, any deviation from the common 
understanding or interpretation of doctrine, except in- 
tentional heresy, was tolerated in the Christian com- 
munity. 

Too much emphasis, however, should not be placed 
on this lenity. However tolerant the Church may have 
been to those who were weak in the faith, or to those 
who, loyal to the truth, speculated on divine things, 
it would be entirely erroneous to conclude that because 
our Divine Lord, His Apostles, and the Fathers of 
the Ante-Nicene Church, and some great leaders of 
Christian thought since then respected the rights of 
human reason, therefore, any one is at liberty to think 
or teach as his ignorance, his love of novelty, his in- 
tellectual pride, or his sinful self-assertiveness may in- 
spire him. Freedom is not anarchy. Nothing was 
more abhorrent to the Apostles of our Lord and the 
teachers of the Early Church than the ever-increasing 
brood of heresies, Gnostic speculations, and mongrel 
mixtures of Oriental vagaries and Pagan philosophies 
which sprang up, as similar heresies and bizarre imi- 
tations of religion spring up to-day, and by interpre- 
tations more ingenious than rational, and accommoda- 

56 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

tions more artful than honest, sought to corrupt the 
purity of the Gospel. "Him that is weak in the faith 
receive ye," said the Apostle, "but not to doubtful 
disputations/' 

The Church was a Body of Believers, not a De- 
bating* Society. Never before had the world wit- 
nessed such intellectual greatness — never before were 
there so many illustrious men, world-conquerors, ora- 
tors, poets, philosophers, and historians as appeared 
in the period extending B. C. ioo to the close of the 
Apostolic Age, and creating a far-reaching intellectual 
climate. What a galaxy of greatness! What names 
shine out there for all time ! Horace, Cicero, Terence, 
Sallust, Livy, Juvenal, Julius Caesar, Pompey, Cas- 
sius, Brutus, Emperor Augustus, Seneca, Tacitus, 
Pliny, Flaccus, Epictetus, Apion of Alexandria, Sue- 
tonius, and others that might be named as these with- 
out regard to order. And yet there was never a time 
when the world was more doubtful of itself. Never 
when religion was more loudly professed and less be- 
lieved. Doubt sat comfortably at the altars of the 
gods. "The philosophers of the Academy," com- 
plained Cicero, "affirm nothing. They despair of ar- 
riving at any certain knowledge." And later, in the 
days of Juvenal, this uncertainty deepened into ridicule. 
But over against the doubt of the world was the abso- 
57 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

lute certainty of the Church. The contrast between 
the literature of that age and the New Testament is 
the contrast between darkness and light. The philos- 
ophers knew nothing; but in contrast to their doubt 
the characteristic note of all believers in Christ was, 
WE KNOW, "We know that the Son of God is 
come and hath given us understanding that we may 
know Him that is true." (i John 5 : 20.) 

The Church was built upon a rock, upon the his- 
toric personality of the Lord Jesus, His death and 
resurrection. It was in possession of facts of history, 
and facts of experience. Nothing was more certain 
to the Church than the facts it believed. The founders 
of the Church were eye-witnesses of the facts. Denial 
of fact was not tolerated, as it could not be and never 
can be. Explanation of fact was another matter. But 
no explanation of fact that emptied it of its super- 
natural character could be accepted, for such explana- 
tion was denial and contrary to experience. For ex- 
ample, it was no explanation that on the Day of 
Pentecost the disciples were "filled with new wine." 
The disciples knew they were filled with the Holy 
Ghost. It was no explanation of the fact of an empty 
grave that the Jews said the disciples of Jesus stole 
His body while the soldiers slept. So of all the facts 
concerning the life, the death, the resurrection, and 

58 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

the mission of their Divine Lord. The Apostles and 
the primitive community of believers were witnesses, 
and their testimony was corroborated by signs and 
wonders and the redeeming effects of the Gospel. 

This body "of truth was "the faith once delivered 
to the saints." It was final. It could not be added 
to, for it embraced all the essential facts. It could 
not be superseded, "even though an angel from 
Heaven preached another" — for it was universal in 
its significance and for all time. Such sublimity of 
conviction was the conviction of the Church, and such 
was the inspiration of its martyrs ! It was not to 
be wondered at, therefore, that this very Apostle who 
so emphatically asserted freedom of thought yet, never- 
theless, for all that, exhorted Timothy, to "keep that 
which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and 
vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so 
called, which some professing have erred concerning 
the faith." To Titus he writes a word of warning. 
"For there are many unruly men, vain talkers and 
deceivers, specially they of the circumcision, whose 
mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole 
houses, teaching things they ought not, for filthy 
lucre's sake." "But speak thou the things that befit 
sound doctrine." "Shun foolish questionings and 
genealogies and strifes and fightings about law, for 
59 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

they are unprofitable and vain. A factious man after 
the first and second admonition refuse." (Rev. Ver.) 
In Second Peter we read : "We did not follow cun- 
ningly devised fables — MvOol — myths — when we made 
known unto you the power and coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, but were witnesses of His majesty." 
"Among you also shall be false teachers who shall 
bring in destructive heresies denying even the Master 
that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift de- 
struction." (Rev. Yer.) In First John is clear warn- 
ing against false teaching concerning the nature of 
Christ. "Little children, it is the last hour, and as 
ye know that Anti-Christ cometh, even now have there 
arisen many Anti-Christs whereby we know that it is 
the last hour. They went out from us, but they were 
not of us." "This is the Anti-Christ, even he that 
denieth the Father and the Son." "Whosoever denieth 
the Son, the same hath not the Father." "As for you, 
let that abide in you which you heard from the begin- 
ning." In the Didache which comes down to us from 
the Church immediately following the death of the 
Apostles, and was probably written by a disciple of the 
Apostles, we read, "Now whosoever cometh and teach- 
eth you all these things, before spoken, receive him; 
but if the teacher himself turn aside and teach another 
teaching so as to overthrow this, do not hear him; 
60 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

but if he teach so as to promote righteousness and 
knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord." 
(Chap. XL) 

The x\postolic Church, then, knew what is believed. 
It had a definite Credo. This creed may not have 
been formulated in distinct propositions everywhere 
the same and in the same order, but every one bap- 
tized into the name of Jesus knew why he was baptized 
and what his baptism signified. Nevertheless Ter- 
tullian in his Proscription Against Heretics, CXXXVI, 
refers the heretics of his day to the Apostolic Churches 
in which the Apostle's "own writings were read" — 
Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Rome — 
which held the same creed taught by the Churches of 
Africa. "The sacred care," says Farrar, {Critical His- 
tory of Free Thought, p. 348), "with which the Chris- 
tians treasured the doctrine, and spurned the attempt 
of heretics to explain it away, proves the strength 
of the conviction that they possessed a definite treas- 
ure of divine truth, introduced at a definite period. 
The very want of toleration, the tenacity of their at- 
tachment to the faith is proof of their undoubting 
conviction concerning the historic verity of the facts 
connected with redemption and the definite character 
of the dogmas which interpreted the facts." And as 
a matter pf history which we can not ignore, what 
61 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

glaring heresy, imperiling the integrity of the faith 
which was condemned by that Primitive Church, has 
the scholarship of this age found to be correct and 
the condemnation of the Church to be wrong? 
Around that faith grounded in historic facts which 
were not debatable the Church stood guard against 
all corrupting influences. It could not, unless it denied 
what it knew, reconcile itself to strange perversions 
of truth which gradually crept in ; heresies which were 
then just as philosophical and just as plausible as 
attempted innovations on this same faith are at the 
present time. Nevertheless, that same Church, as we 
have seen, and the Church in the succeeding age, did 
fully recognize the principle and the exercise of free- 
dom of thought ; for it appeals to all clear thinking 
that it is absurd to define free thought only as that 
exercise of thought which is opposed to the belief of 
the Church. 



62 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 



V 

Perhaps it is not going too far to say that in all 
the ranges of the centuries there is no age which so 
closely resembles the period of the Early Church as 
does this age of ours. Along whatever lines of analogy 
our thought may run, Politics, Conflict of Classes, 
Culture, or Religion, the resemblances are as remark- 
able as they are suggestive, affording to the philosophic 
mind a fertile field for largest thinking. A similar 
analogy in broadest outline may be drawn between 
the Church in that period and the Church in our pres- 
ent day. It is well known that when the Infant Church 
stepped beyond the confines of Palestine to become a 
World-Religion, it came into immediate conflict with 
Greek philosophy, Pagan civilization, Oriental cults, 
religious quackery, appalling vice, and universal doubt. 
In the days of Paul and Peter and John the intellect 
of the world was on the side of Paganism. But all 
religions, all philosophies had been tried and all had 
failed. World-weariness, paralyzing doubt, deep- 
rooted pessimism were eating out the heart of hu- 
manity. A few years before the birth of our Lord, 
Julius Caesar, Imperator, and Pontifex Maximus of 

63 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

the Roman Religion, had declared in the presence of 
the assembled Senators of Rome on the occasion of 
the Cataline conspiracy that death was an eternal sleep. 
The immortality of the soul was a philosophic dream. 
Not a Senator in the Temple of Concord that day, 
not even Cato who was present, challenged the state- 
ment. Well, three hundred years later, in solemn as- 
sembly, and in the presence of a converted Emperor, 
three hundred confessors and lowly ministers of the 
Lord Jesus declared, "We believe in one God, the 
Father Almighty, in one Lord Jesus Christ, who suf- 
fered and rose again on the third day. We believe 
in the Holy Ghost, the remission of sins, the resur- 
rection of the body, and the life everlasting." 

What an infinite distance in thought between that 
Senate Chamber in Rome and the Nicene Council ! 
The world had been turned upside down. The Gos- 
pel of the Son of God had at last conquered the heart 
and the intellect of the world. It was a fierce con- 
flict. Out of it the Church did not come without 
wounds, but it left Paganism dead, or dying, on the 
field. W T hat did it? What was that power which 
under God matched itself against the combined powers 
of Hellenic thought and the religions of a thousand 
years and destroyed them? It was not enough that 
martyrs should die on the block, or like Polycarp and 

6 4 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

the martyrs of Lyons, at the stake : it was not enough 
that holy lives should put to shame unparalleled wick- 
edness : there was yet another battle to be fought, an- 
other fortress to be taken — the citadel of philosophic 
thought and scientific culture. The appeal of the 
Christ to the reason of men, to the rational faculty 
of the human mind which can never rest in doubt, 
must be made in Academy and Grove: the babblings 
of "knowledge falsely so called'' must be met by eternal 
truth made crystalline to the souls of men, and the 
intellect of the world, which is the commanding power 
of the world, must be made subject to Jesus Christ, 
"in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom." 

The literary attack of Pagan philosophy was fierce 
and stubborn, supported as it was by the culture of 
the Empire and the fanaticism of hatred to the Cross. 
But the Church responded. The great schools of 
Antioch and Alexandria poured forth literature which 
gripped the reason of men and held them to the truth. 
Century after century witnessed the rise of defenders 
of the Faith, whose brilliant apologies, trenchant criti- 
cisms, thought-compelling and convincing, riddled 
every nook and corner of Pagan thought and life, 
every attack made by a Marcion, a Celsus, or Porphyry 
on the Old and New Testaments, every subtle heresy 
which sprung up inside or outside the Church, and 
5 6 5 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

when the battle was over, the intellect of the world 
was on the side of the Cross, and has remained there 
ever since! 

As was situated the Church of the Ante-Nicene 
period, so is the Church of to-day. When was there 
such an age? When such ferment of ideas, such 
chaos of notions, such confusion, worse confounded, 
theological, philosophical, political, and religious? 
When were there more dangerous problems, social, 
political, industrial, threatening the peace of the world 
and the long results of time? When were there 
deeper convictions of religion and wider indifference 
to the Church ? Deeper joy among the lowly, and 
deeper cynicism and pessimism and sadness among 
Christless intellectuals? Listen to Matthew Arnold on 
Dover Beach, watching the full tide of the ocean and 
the round moon shining over all : 

"The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full and round Earth's shore, 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Retreating, to the breath 
Of the nightwind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world." 
66 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

The question is, What must be the relation of the 
Church to this wild welter of human thought? Like 
a rock against which the yeasty waters beat from 
all points of the compass the Church is surrounded 
by swarms of multitudinous theories, philosophies, 
so-called sciences, and vagaries of aberrated intellects, 
poppied illusions and bizarre recrudescences of Pagan 
ideas and Gnostic cults well suited to the mental de- 
generates who play them. There are also schools of 
theological thought, the products of Kantian, Hegelian, 
or other philosophy, with their popular cries of, "Back 
to Jesus," "Theology without Metaphysics," "Religion 
without Dogma," a baseless dream, indeed for what 
the Ritschlian school calls the "Religion of the Spirit" 
never did and never can exist separate and apart 
from historical fact. What, it must again be asked, 
should be the attitude of the Church toward all these 
notions and varieties of philosophies and theological 
schools? The answer to this question will determine 
the relation of the Church to freedom of thought. 

To this modern Church, the Church of to-day, as 
to the Primitive Church is transmitted the Historic 
Faith. This Faith rests on facts. Facts never change. 
Whatever occurred in the life of Jesus is a fact for- 
ever. If Jesus died and rose again it never can be 
that He did not die, and did not rise again from the 

6 7 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

dead. If the Apostles preached this Jesus as the Re- 
deemer of men. that through His atoning blood there 
is forgiveness of sins, and eternal life, these facts re- 
main. The writers of the Gospels may have deceived 
US, they may have given us an ideal Jesus, and colored 
Mis statements as radical writers suggest; His dis- 
ciples may have misinterpreted Him, and the Primitive 
Church under the influence of Pauline teaching may 
have invented an entirely erroneous theology, alien 
to the pure Gospel of the Galilean ministry — and, 
finally, we may not believe at all any of the things 
that are written in the Gospels or taught in the 
Epistles, hut may assume with Martineau that "the 
historical life of Jesus of Nazareth fell upon a time 
ami related to Him a people charged with precon- 
ceptions which threw a variety of false colors upon 
His figure, and have handed down the image of it 
in several editions, no one of which can claim photo- 
graphic truth." {Scut of Authority in Religion, 
p. 450.) We may assume all this. But does our 
assumption change the facts? Let us not forget the 
words of Galileo, "And still it moves." Believe or 
not believe — there is the record. Has that record been 
disproved? Not yet. The assumption that the Gos- 
pels are not photographs of facts, but colored state- 
ments, personal reflections of the authors upon the 
68 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

unique personality of Jesus made long after His de- 
parture from the earth is the last hope of radical 
criticism. Strauss based his epoch-making Life of 
Jesus on the theory of myths. Saner scholarship 
showed that between the death of Jesus and the writ- 
ing of the Gospels there was not sufficient time for 
the growth of myths. This assumption stated by 
Martineau can not hope for better success. The Gos- 
pels were written in the lifetime of those who were 
witnesses, or were disciples of those who were wit- 
nesses, of the Gospel facts. Criticism has utterly failed 
to prove that the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of 
Acts are second century productions. In his latest 
work on the Date of the Acts and Synoptic Gospels, 
Professor Harnack, having reviewed the argument of 
Wellhausen supporting a late date for Luke's Gospel, 
says, "Hence it is proved that it is altogether w r rong 
to say that the eschatological passages force us to 
the conclusion that the third Gospel was written, after 
the year 70 A. D. And since there are no other 
reasons for a later date it follows that the strong 
arguments which favor the composition of the Acts 
before 70 A. D. now also apply in their full force 
to the Gospel of St. Luke, and it seems now to be 
established beyond question that both books were writ- 
ten while Paul was yet alive." In a note he adds, 

69 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

"Among the scholars who are of this opinion I spe- 
cially mention von Hofman, Thiersch, Wissler, Resch, 

and Blass.'' From this it follows that since Mark 
was one of the sources for Luke's Gospel, therefore 
Mark's Gospel was also written "while Paul was yet 
alive." The facts recorded in these Gospels must have 
been known to Paul. He knew these facts from the 
Apostles at Jerusalem, before the Gospels were written, 
for he tells us that he went up to Jerusalem to con- 
sult Peter, that is to learn the facts in detail of the 
whole Movement from the beginning as they were 
known to Peter and James, the Lord's brother. Four- 
teen years later he was with Peter and John and the 
rest, but during all these years he had been preaching 
and teaching, and writing Epistles to the Churches, 
on the foundation of his personal experience and the 
facts which were later recorded in the Gospels but 
which were then in the possession of the Apostolic 
College. Everything, therefore, that is recorded in 
the Gospels was common knowledge in Christian com- 
munities before the Gospels were written. But in 
order that radical criticism might have some ground 
for denial, must we imagine that all the witnesses of 
the Gospel history had died before Paul wrote his 
Epistles, and before the Gospels of Luke and Mark 
were written? This can not be. There were many 
70 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

disciples alive when Paul wrote his Epistles to the 
Corinthians who had seen the Lord after His resur- 
rection. "Eor I delivered unto you first of all that 
which I also received, how that Christ died . . . 
was buried . . . and . . . rose again the 
third day . . . that He was seen of Cephas, then 
of The Twelve: after that, He was seen of above five 
hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part 
remain unto this present, but some have fallen asleep." 
That is, twenty-five years after the death and resur- 
rection of Jesus the "majority" of five hundred people 
who had seen Him at His final appearance were alive 
and could bear testimony to the fact that they had 
seen the risen Lord. 

Now, to return to the text, is it not asking too 
much that the Church should surrender these facts 
of the Gospels as not being facts under penalty of 
being antagonistic to freedom of thought? But let 
us exhaust this subject as far as we may, let us go 
to the very roots of it and let it be granted that this 
surrender can be made. To what school of philosophy, 
then, or of theology, shall it surrender? — to the 
Kantian, the Hegelian, the Tubingen, the Ritschlian? 
If the Church should surrender the fact that Christ 
rose bodily from the dead because a certain view of 
the universe insists that miracles are contrary to Na- 
71 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

turc, without the proviso, Nature as zee know it, as 
Augustine said, what theory of our Lord's resurrec- 
tion shall we adopt? Strauss'? Kenan's? Kcim's? 
Schnxeidel's ? Or, since these writers differ from each 
other, shall we adopt no theory at all and simply 
assume, as 1 Iarnack does, an Master faith without an 
Easter fact? But, can the mind rest nn this? 1 Can 
we have faith in a risen Christ if there never was a 
risen Christ? Can the mind rest in contradictions? 
Schmeidel insists that the appearances of Jesus after 
the resurrection were of a purely subjective character, 
hut what kind of subjectivity is that which can be 
touched and heard ? Professor Lake finds a textual 
interpolation wherever he finds a pointhlank contra- 
diction to his theory. How can we change the nar- 
ratives in the Gospel so as to satisfy all these inven- 
tions? And how, after all, having - done this, can the 
Church escape the odium of antagonism to free 
thought? For it is clear that whichever theory is 
adopted the Church must insist that that is the true 
theory. It must, therefore, resist as false the teach- 
ings of all other theories, and thus again be open 
to the charge of opposing freedom of thought, or else 
hold that all other views or theories are of equal value 
with its own, although they are all known to be equally 
false. 

7 2 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

It would seem, then, that there is only one way- 
out of this dilemma, that is for the Church to re- 
nounce all authority, all dogmas as such, to shake it- 
self free from all formulas, rites, and ceremonies, as 
it is insisted it should, and fall back on the religion 
of the Spirit. Let this be done. And let us hasten 
to affirm, since it is true, that Religion is not The- 
ology — that it is not a series of dogmatic propositions, 
traditions of faith handed down from misty begin- 
nings — but that it is life, that it is the kingdom of 
God in the soul, a living experience of God. This 
is what Harnack, the most brilliant representative 
of liberal theology and chief among the foremost 
scholars of modern times, insists it should be. 

Now, it is quite true, to begin with, that this 
definition of religion is neither new nor necessary. 
It was not new with Schleiermacher, the real founder 
of the Ritschlian school to which Harnack belongs; 
nor was it new to Wesley, who preached the same 
all over England before Schleiermacher ever wrote 
his famous Discourses on Religion. No thinking man 
of our day would identify religion with dogma. Har- 
nack's insistance, and Sabatier's also, that religion 
should be separated from dogma seems to be entirely 
superfluous unless he had in mind the religion of some 
State Church. But, since we have agreed to adopt 
73 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

this program, the query arises, Does this rejection of 
dogma solve any questions for us? Does it really 
show us the way out of the difficulty of reconciling 
Authority of Truth and Freedom of Criticism within 
Ihurch? No one will deny that there is a dis- 
tinction between Religion and Theology, as there is 
between the Church and the Kingdom. Religion is 
not dogma, as Piety is not Ritual. But it does not 
follow that Religion can exist wholly separate from 
dogma Tt is incontestably true, as Harnack says, that 
"the Gospel is no theoretical system of doctrine or of 
philosophy." But that explains nothing. There is 
a ''God the Father*' in that Gospel, and a Christ Jesus 
who therein reveals the Father to us. That "God" 
and that "Jesus" must be interpreted. No being but 
an intelligent being can be a religious being. But 
if he is an intelligent, reasoning being he must think. 
He can not satisfy himself by merely looking at such 
naked terms as "God," he must know or ask, "What 
is 'God?'" "What does 'Father mean?" He must 
interpret. Religion is not thought, but there is no 
Religion without thought. There is no Christianity 
without Christ. Who, then, is "Christ?" Is He the 
historical Christ of the Church, or the Christ of imagi- 
nation, the Christ of Paul, or the Christ of the Uni- 
tarian ? 

74 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

To every age and to every thinker and to every 
seeker after God comes the challenge of Jesus Him- 
self, "Whom say ye that I am?" It will not do to 
fall back on experience. If we reject the Gospels 
as they are, which Harnack does not do, but which 
Radical Criticism would have us do, and the Apostolic 
Epistles also, upon what in the last analysis does ex- 
perience rest? How can subjective experience of Re- 
ligion be final authority for historical fact ? Certainly 
we must and do trust experience, but what proof or 
assurance have we that there is any objective reality 
corresponding to experience? There can be no ex- 
perience of a thing without a knowledge of the thing. 
If one would experience God he must know of God. 
Otherwise how would he know that it was God he 
experienced or believed he experienced? Experience 
must have a reason. There must be an Objective 
to a Subjective. Experience must be justified by an 
adequate cause. Faith must be faith in a thing or a 
Person, but what that faith or belief is that is dogma, 
that is theology. To tell the world, as Martineau and 
some eminent writers of the Ritschlian School would 
have us do, that we may still have the spirit of Jesus 
even if as a result of scientific criticism we lose the 
historic Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, is simply to 
substitute a philosophical dream for an historical fact. 
75 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

Deliberate self-deception is no cure for historical diffi- 
culties. Suppose we apply this self-deceiving method 
to other historical personalities — accept, for example, a 
supposed spirit of Washington, but deny the historic 
Washington; picture to our thought an invented 
Washington, but deny the reality of the flesh-and- 
blood Washington as he was known to his contempo- 
raries? 

The simple truth is, The idea o\ a Religion of 
the Spirit is an idea which never was an historical 
fact. Such a religion never existed and never can 
exist. There never was any other Christianity than 
that of the Gospels, and that is a miraculous Chris- 
tianity. The Religion of the Spirit is never found 
separate from dogma. Prom the day that Peter in 
answer to his Lord cried out, "Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God," the disciples of Jesus had 
a doctrine of Jesus. There is no such thing as an 
Easter faith without an Easter fact. Christianity is 
not an abstraction. The moral power of Christianity 
is not the continuance of self-deception or belief in 
ghosts. Pentecost does not explain itself. That the 
pure doctrine of Jesus has been overlaid by false in- 
terpretations is platitude; and that the task of the 
critic is to present the Christ of the Gospels apart 
from dogmatic theories of His Person is no less ele- 

7 6 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

mentary; but it does not follow that freedom of 
thought is therefore resisted because the Church fails 
to recognize the Christ which the critic with a philos- 
ophy presents to us when the false interpretations have 
been removed. 

The error of those who would divorce religion 
from doctrine is the assumption that all dogma is a 
theological proposition dependent solely for its validity 
upon the authority of the Church. This is a mistake. 
The Authority of the Church is the authority of the 
reason, of truth itself. True dogma is a product of 
reason; a proposition in theology which does not 
depend upon any external authority for its vitality, 
but upon its own inherent truth. 

This way out of our difficulty, then — that is, re- 
jection of all dogmas and theology which occasion 
conflict — does not help us much. It leads only to a 
blind alley through which there is no thoroughfare. 
The Church can not surrender the facts of the Gos- 
pel, the facts which constitute Christianity. Those 
facts would still be with us even if the Church in some 
frightful apostasy should surrender them. We can 
not ignore the sun. The attitude of the Church toward 
theories and philosophies which deny or explain away 
these facts, must be, in the nature of things, an ir- 
reconcilable attitude. The Incarnation as a fact and 
77 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

not a mode of Divine manifestation is not a specu- 
lation, and it is not debatable within the Church. Nor 
is the Atonement, nor the Personality of the Holy 
Spirit, nor any other fact or foundation truth of the 
Christian religion. What great teachers, or Councils, 
or Synods have said in explanation of these facts is 
entirely another matter. Pact is one thing, explana- 
tion of it is quite another thing. 

It appeals to reason, therefore, that when such 
facts are denied, or explained away by one who would 
enter the Church or its ministry, or attempt by writ- 
ings to modify or destroy its belief, the Church is 
compelled by its own claims as a witness of the truth 
to forbid the intrusion. Such person has de facto by 
his avowed dissent withdrawn himself from the unity 
of those who do believe and have the right to be pro- 
tected in their faith. In this act of exclusion the 
Church, however, can not be open to the charge of 
intolerance, for every judicial mind will at once con- 
cede that the Church has as much right to exercise its 
freedom of thought against the supposed heretic as 
he has to exercise his judgment against the Church. 
No one has a monopoly of freedom. The truth is, 
he who does not believe the essential teachings of 
Christianity is not a Christian at all, unless he in- 
vents a definition of Christianity as does the Uni- 

78 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

tarian specially designed to cover his own case. In- 
deed, one might with equal logic demand admission 
into the kingdom of God without repentance, on the 
ground that to deny him that right is to interfere 
with his moral freedom to be either good or bad. 
Certainly no one has the right to be bad, for there 
is no rightness in badness, and the kingdom of God 
is the kingdom of righteousness into which badness 
can not enter. 

And, after all, what is freedom for? Freedom, it 
will be conceded, is not an end in itself. It must be 
a means to an end. But to what end? Certainly it 
can not be intellectual gymnastics, nor the exploita- 
tions of one's own knowledge, nor of his personal 
idiosyncrasies, his likes and dislikes, his beliefs or 
unbeliefs, all of which ends or purposes must be re- 
garded as evidences of egotistical mania. We can only 
conceive of freedom in the last analysis as a means 
for attaining to truth. Any other motive for its exer- 
cise in religious thinking is in itself immoral, for how 
can that be moral which has in the heart of it an 
immoral purpose — the exploitation of the ego? 

Furthermore, the Church as "the heir of all the 

ages" is not organized for the purpose of scattering 

to the winds the "long results of time," the teachings 

and experiences of centuries. We can not break loose 

79 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

from all that has gone before if we would; we can 
not reconstruct the universe of thought and life all 
over again every time a cry arises for readjustment 
of the Church to the spirit of the age. There is some- 
thing greater than the spirit of the age, and that is 
the Spirit of the Ages. 



80 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 



VI 

What has just been said leads us, in. the interest of 
fairness, to consider briefly the function of the Church. 
What is the Church? And what is the Church for? 
First, the Church is Religion organized. It is the 
visible expression of the Gospel in human experience. 
Its function is determined by the spiritual energy 
which gave it birth. It is not a Philosophical Club, 
nor an Association for the Advancement of Science, 
or of Commerce. It is an Association for the Spir- 
itual Development of Humanity. It was born in 
faith and in the experience of the Eternal Spirit, 
and its sole purpose or function is to bring men into 
the same relation. 

The means by which this is accomplished is preach- 
ing or teaching. "Go preach, disciple all nations," is 
its charter. No other institution among men can com- 
pare itself to it or show similar charter. It can not, 
therefore, become a mere reproduction of ancient 
schools of philosophy, or of present thought, forever 
debating but never coming to a knowledge of the 
truth. It has the truth to begin with. It has the 
facts. They are not doubtful to itself. Certainly it 
6 81 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

is often asserted that "No historical fact, attested by 
documentary or any secondary truth, can ever be a 
fundamental religious truth," that "A religious truth 
can not be proved by an historical event," that "No 
mathematical fact is doubtful; no historical fact is 
certain," that "It is no longer possible to saddle with 
the whole weight of eternity any historical personage 
or facts however remarkable or unique.*' How do we 
kn<»w that? But, leaving this aside, we can not at- 
tach much importance to such fallacies. The Church 
has never depended solely on documentary evidence 
for its belief. The Church existed before the Gospels. 
The documentary evidence originally was a product of 
the Church, and not the Church of the documents. 
From age to age the Church continues its own testi- 
mony. In the whole of Christian history the facts 
have never changed. The Lord Jesus is not a product 
of yesterday. He is not a fact in human history iso- 
lated from all that has gone before, or happened since. 
The Christ of history is the Christ of the Here and 
Now, a present Divine Reality, and has been every 
day since He ascended from Olivet. The effect of 
His once coming into human history is visible to all. 
From this fact there is no escape, no matter how we 
explain it. Now, it is not the business of the Church 
to debate the facts over and over, but to preach them. 
82 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

This does not mean that the verbal forms of Church 
creeds are fixed and unchangeable. They never were 
fixed. Deeper apprehension of truth must ever find 
new expression. The Church is a living organism. 
Like all living things it is subject to biological laws. 
It must have the power of assimilation, the instinct 
to absorb assimilative matter from without and to 
build it into its own life or to use it as a means of 
self-expression. It must have the power of adjust- 
ment to changing environment, thus possessing in- 
herently the faculty of development. But the prin- 
ciple of life does not change. Life does not become 
not-life and yet continue life. The facts in the his- 
toric creed of Christendom do not change, if they are 
facts. The letter changes, but the underlying truth 
remains forever the same. In order to prevent mis- 
understanding of what is here meant by development 
it may be necessary to state that I do not mean by 
development of doctrine what John Henry Newman 
(late Cardinal) so ingeniously attempted to prove in 
his famous work, the principles of which have been 
adopted by Abbe Loisy and the Modernists in France 
and England. The teaching that the doctrine of Chris- 
tianity was given only in germ and intended by our 
Lord and His Apostles to be developed in later times, 
that many doctrines were held in reserve, or only faintly 

83 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

suggested; in a word, that we may apply the theory 
of evolution to the Doctrines of Christianity as we see 
that hypothesis later in the Darwinian theory of the 

Origin of Species, which doctrine of development New- 
man anticipated, is not Scriptural, nor is it in harmony 
with the historical facts. On such a theory as Newman 
elaborated with so much genius any addition to the 
original deposit ^\ faith — the perfect Revelation of 

God in the New Testament, could he defended, and 

however necessary in the judgment of Modernists it 

may he to the Church of Rome, although the con- 
servative theologians of that Church will repudiate it 
as used by Modernists who avowiedly build on New- 
man, it can in no sense be adopted by Evangelical 
teachers. 

But the function of the Church is not exhausted 
in bearing witness to the truth, or in propagating it. 
The Church has a duty to those within its fold. Its 
function there is the development and enrichment of 
the spiritual life imparted. The Church is the foster- 
ing mother of the soul. What the character of life is 
depends largely upon its environment. Xo organism 
or institution can realize its purpose or justify its ex- 
istence if it fails to exercise its functions, and since 
the function of the Church is to establish among men 
the kingdom of God, it follows as a necessary con- 

8 4 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

elusion that the Church can exercise such functions 
with vigor only in the degree of the completest sub- 
ordination of the individual members of the Church 
to the interest of the whole compatible with the largest 
freedom of the individual. For that institution only, 
whether religious or secular, is the most effective in 
which the living principle is: All for Each and Each 
for All. Where this principle does not obtain, but 
the opposite, rivalry, aggrandizement of self, compe- 
tition without restraint, has open field, the law of the 
struggle for survival comes in and dominates the 
whole, with the result that, in the long run, inter- 
necine warfare destroys the organismi, whether it be 
political or ecclesiastical, social or spiritual. It is, 
therefore, necessary that the individual should be sub- 
ordinate to the whole for the benefit of the whole. 
It is quite easy to denounce such teaching as spir- 
itual despotism and irrational. But it is not despotism 
and it is not irrational. As members of the social 
organism we have to be, that is, our individual inter- 
ests must be, whether we like it or not, subordinated 
to the larger interests of Society. If they were not 
subordinated there would be no Society and no civilized 
individual. Man is a social being. Being that he 
can reach his true development only in social rela- 
tions, that is, as a member of Society. But the mo- 

85 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

merit he becomes a member of Society he comes under 
the operation oi laws which are at work solely for 
the evolution of the social organism. These laws 
stibly play upon him not simply as a self-suffi- 
cient individual, but also as a single unit in the body 
politic which must adjust itself in harmonious rela- 
tion to all other units in that organism for the per- 
petuity and development of the whole. Should the 
individual rebel against these laws, and withdraw from 
all social relations, as he may, he gradually succumbs 
to the dominion of other cosmic laws and inevitably 
reverts to primitive conditions, as tribes and races 
have done among whom the social bond was broken, 
and thus fails to reach his highest efficiency. So it 
is in the Church. Man is a religious being. As such 
he can reach his highest spiritual development only 
in the Church, for it is in the Church only that he 
can find that which is necessary to his spiritual life 
and growth. The Church is not an accident. It is 
not a convenience. It is a necessity. It is as neces- 
sary to the religious man as the social organism is 
to the social man. For it is there only in the beauty 
of the sanctuary ; in its solemn worship; in its hymns of 
adoration and praise; in its hallow- ed associations; its 
mystic meanings ; its holy fellowships in a common faith 
linking the devout soul on his knees with all the holy 
86 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

ones of the ages gone; in the strengthening influence 
of its saints whose memories linger as a sweet per- 
fume though the vase be broken ; and in its far reaches 
of vision beyond the visible and the present to the 
unseen glory and companionships of an illimitable 
future — it is there only in the fellowship of the re- 
deemed that man finds his true environment, his deep- 
est satisfaction in holy living and his needful stimulus 
to the highest attainments of the spirit-life. It is evi- 
dent, then, that as in the social world the individual 
necessarily surrenders those personal qualities, aims, 
and pursuits which are inimical to the well-being of 
Society, so he who enters the Church, that is, the 
Spiritual Society, must make his relation to that So- 
ciety operate for the highest good of the whole body. 
His purposes and desires, his mental attitude and per- 
sonal conduct must all be subordinated to its highest 
interests, its final aims and present functions. 

This adjustment of the individual to his spiritual 
environment is not irrational. Nothing could be more 
rational and more in harmony with our common sense 
ideas of unity of law and order. It is more rational 
than is the surrender of the Social Man to the Social 
Organism, since while he is impelled by his social 
instincts to labor for the progress of Society, his un- 
sentimental reason is in unceasing warfare against his 

87 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

instinct. For what is Social Progress and what are 
its underlying conditions? Social Progress is that 
development of humanity from unrelated and dis- 
organized conditions of existence to associated inter- 
ests; from lower states of thinking and living and 
feeling and pursuits, to the highest enjoyment of 
realized potencies, mental, moral, and physical, of 
which man as a rational and social being is capable. 
Mow is this attained, that is, what are the conditions 
of Social Progress? Subordination. History clearly 
teaches that there can be progress only where there 
is subordination of individual interests to the interests 
of the Social Order. The Social Organism is every- 
thing, the individual nothing, except so far as he con- 
tributes to the welfare of the whole. Driven by the 
compelling power of instinct the individual submits 
to Social conditions which his reason wars against, 
since they deprive him of liberty and militate against 
his personal desires. But such is his nature and such 
is the influence upon him of the forces working for the 
evolution of the race, that only as a participating unit 
in the Social Organism, and only by such subordina- 
tion of himself to the interests of the larger and more 
extended life of the whole, can he himself find his 
true development. But where is the reason for it all ? 
Reason demands that the individual should care for 
88 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

himself, his own ease, comforts, pleasures, and im- 
mediate interests of the living present. What possible 
sanction of reason, then, can there be for the sacrifice 
of himself in the present for the sake of an unknown 
future, for the benefit of generations yet unborn, but 
for which the forces of evolution are working; for 
the expansion of Social Progress in the ages yet to 
come in which he personally will have no part ? Here 
is an irreconcilable antagonism in man himself — an 
irreducible conflict between Reason and Instinct — Na- 
ture driving him one way, his Reason impelling him 
another. George Eliot, following the teaching of 
Comte, may sing of the "Choir Invisible, of those im- 
mortal dead who live again in minds made better by 
their presence." But poetic sentiment is no substitute 
for cold Reason. And in his tenth chapter of the 
Data of Ethics, Herbert Spencer tries to show how 
this conflict between Egoism and Altruism may be 
reconciled in the progressive development of Society 
by the growth of compromise in which shall be found 
conciliation between Personal and Social interests. 
But of what benefit now is the present state of social 
development to the millions of forgotten ages who 
were caught up in the sweep of cosmic law? to the 
multitudes that once toiled on the fertile plains of 
Babylon, or the deltas of the Nile? Or, of what benefit 

8 9 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

is it to the millions of toilers in OUT modern civiliza- 
tion who submit now to social and industrial condi- 
tions which are burdensome and galling, to be told 
that they are building the future, that they are con- 
tributing in altruistic spirit to the future progress of 
the race, the development of humanity? What does 
the miner toiling in the darkness, the victims of the 
sweat-shop, the wage-earners living on the thin edge 
of starvation, the millions who submit to the limita- 
tions of poverty throughout their entire existence and 
pass away at last like a bubble on the boundless sea, 
care for the Social Good of future millenniums which 
they will never enjoy? For, 

"Observe — it had not much 
Consoled the race of Mastodons to know 
Before they went to fossil, that anon 
Their place would quicken with the Elephant; 
They were not Elephants, but Mastodons: 
And I, a man, as men are now, and not 
As men may be hereafter, feel with men 
In the agonizing present." 

— Aurora Leigh. 

Where is the rational sanction for it all? 

But in the Church this irrational conflict between 
man and his social condition, this antagonism be- 
tween reason and instinct in man himself, is wholly 
done away. Reason rebels against onerous limitations 
90 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

and toil in the present for the sake of the future be- 
cause man has no rational interest in that social or 
political future. In the Church this is reversed. Man 
is a spiritual being and will live in a spiritual future. 
He, therefore, has the profoundest and most personal 
and immediate interest in that future. All his hopes 
of redemption from the evil that is in him are centered 
in that future, his dreams of happiness, of soul free- 
dom, of eternal peace with himself and God and the 
universe are there. Hence to that future he rationally 
sacrifices the present, and in doing so finds the recon- 
ciliation of the conflict that is in him, that is, between 
Reason and Instinct. He is building for himself the 
future which he himself will personally enjoy and 
which he enjoys even now in this present, for he sees 

4 'The triumph from afar, 
By faith he brings it nigh." 

The natural man lives in the present, the spiritual 
man in the future. He is not a mere unit utilized by 
evolutionary forces for the preservation and develop- 
ment of a Social Organism toward an indefinite end, 
and then cast aside when his efficiency is gone. He 
is an integral part of the whole forever. He is an 
immortal being in whose personal redemption and 
transcendent glory of spiritual peace and power and 
91 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

development the whole Heaven of the future is mir- 
rored. The redeemed millions of past ages did not 

subordinate their present to the building- of the Church 
in vain. The martyrs, singed with flame, holy men 
and women pouring out their prayers, subduing in 
themselves the lure of the world, sacrificing carnal 
pleasures and personal interests, living Eor others, and 
dreaming- of the ever coming kingdom, did not suffer 
or toil in vain, nor are they personally lost to the 
Church Triumphant as is the dust of Babylon to the 
Society of the future. What they lived For and toiled 
for they shall inherit, they with us and we with them; 
the whole Church of all ages and of all climes and 
of all tongues and races and tribes of men. "And 
these all having obtained a good report through faith, 
received not the promise. God having provided some 
better thing for us, that they without us should not 
be made perfect." (Hebrews XL) 

It is, therefore, not irrational that for the build- 
ing of the Church, for its efficiency in promoting the 
very purposes for which the Church exists at all, the 
individual who would relate himself to the life of the 
Church should subordinate himself to the interests of 
the Church. By such subordination of self the Church 
is enabled without conflict between jarring interests 
to reach the highest development of spiritual growth, 
92 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

and its individual members at the same time to reach 
their highest development in spiritual culture and re- 
deeming efficiency without the distractions of de- 
structive criticism. But where there is discord, dis- 
putings, poverty of spiritual sustenance, and chaotic 
confusion, there can be no healthful, normal develop- 
ment. The quality of one's life depends largely upon 
one's theory of life. In the Church that theory is 
formed by the teaching of the Church, and the influ- 
ence of holy fellowship. Any teaching, therefore, the 
logical result of which must be disintegration of unity 
of thought and fellowship, must be destructive of the 
very purpose for which the Church exists, and equally 
destructive of the peace and comfort of souls who 
do not find spiritual strength or joy in exchanging 
the certitude of faith for the probabilities of criticism. 
For, of what value, after all, is it to a devout soul 
to exchange exalted faith, the consciousness of God, 
and that mystical peace of the soul resulting there- 
from, for all the interrogation points that critics of 
the faith from Celsus to Renan or Schmeidel have 
punctuated the New Testament with without ever hav- 
ing added a single truth to religion or having solved 
for a single earnest soul the mysteries of life and 
death? Of what value is it? "Will a man leave the 
snow of Lebanon?" Will he leave the heights of clear 
93 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

vision, the bracing air of God, the snow-capped peaks 
where the springs break forth and rivers of inspira- 
tion are born for the arid plains of doubt ? There are 
no springs in the desert I There is no certainty in 
the conclusions of criticism like that certainty which 
is felt in the conclusions of the heart. No religion 
ever did yet, nor ever can, rest primarily on the in- 
tellect. As Mr. Lecky asserts {History of European 
Morals, Vol. I, p. 56), "All the nobler religions which 
have governed mankind have done so ... by 
speaking as common religion describes it, to the 
heart." There is that in human nature which responds 
to religion, and therefore the appeal of religion is not 
to the intellect, hut to the heart, which demands re- 
ligion as that in which it finds supreme satisfaction 
for its needs. Therefore, as Benjamin Kidd in his 
Social Evolution, p. 122, points out, "We see why, 
despite the apparent tendency to the disintegration of 
religious belief among the intellectual classes at the 
present day, those who seek to compromise matters 
by getting rid of that feature which is the essential 
element in all religions make no important headway; 
and why, as a prominent member of one of the 
Churches has recently remarked, the undogmatic sects 
reap the scantiest harvest while the dogmatic Churches 
still take the multitude." Religion can never be sus- 
94 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

tained on a negative. If religion depended on the 
intellect the few intellectuels only out of the millions 
of humanity could be saved, while the remainder would 
be outlawed. This is no plea for pious ignorance. 
Nor is it a defense for ostrich theology. The widest 
knowledge and the severest critical spirit are entirely 
compatible with sanctity of soul, else we should be 
driven to exclude such men of the kingdom as Tholuck, 
Neander, Dorner, Schleiermacher, Delitzsch, Alford, 
Westcott, Hort, Ellicott, and hosts of other Biblical 
critics, historians, and theologians who have "adorned 
the doctrine of God" both by their piety and their 
learning. 

Then, since one is bound to give reasons for his 
unbelief as one likewise is for his faith, think seriously 
of the process by which the conclusions of criticism 
must be reached for one's self, unless he depends solely 
on the authority of scientific critics, which if he does 
he only substitutes one authority for another. Lin- 
guistics, history, philosophy, comparative religions, 
manuscripts, translations, recensions — what unity of 
thought would come of it all? What Lord Balfour, 
(Foundations of Belief, p. 204), presents as the result 
of a community investigating political or moral prob- 
lems, dissecting "all the great loyalties which make 
social life possible and all the minor conventions which 
95 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

help to make it easy; and to weigh out with scrupulous 
precision the exact degree of assent which in each par- 
ticular case the results of this process might seem to 
justify," is applicable here. "To say," says this states- 
man, "that such a community, if it acted upon the 
opinions thus arrived at, would stand hut a poor 
chance in the struggle for existence is to say far too 
little. It could never even begin to be; and if by a 
miracle it was created it would without doubt im- 
mediately resolve itself into its constituent elements." 
The function of the Church, evidently, is to preach 
the Gospel, and to establish believing men and women 
in the life of God. To subordinate one's interests 
to this purpose docs not seem to be either despotic or 
irrational. 







IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 



VII 

And here, to take a more comprehensive view of the 
subject, it may be worth while to express the judg- 
ment that every attempt to force the Church aside 
from this distinctive mission into the forum of science 
and philosophy, economics or politics, will inevitably 
end in dismal failure for Society, and a no less dis- 
tressing humiliation to the Church. The Church was 
not established primarily for such purposes. Its mis- 
sion is the redemption of men from sin, the guilt of 
it, the love of it, and the power of it. Accomplish 
this and the regeneration of Society will inevitably 
follow, as effect follows cause. For no one can be 
filled with the spirit of the Gospel and all that it means, 
and not work and pray for the realization of the ideal 
society which is in the program of Jesus, and which 
will be a visible reflection on earth of the kingdom 
of God. Jesus was not a social reformer. He was 
not a political leader. He was, and is, the Redeemer. 
He would save Society from within, for out of the 
inner life of men is Society evolved and all its prob- 
lems. That theory of social regeneration which 
imagines that without religion it can save humanity 
7 97 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

by utilitarian philosophy, applied science, education, 
literature, and art will discover in the end that the 
soul of man is more than all of them; that greed is 
stronger than theory; that envy and jealousy are 
deeper than science; that evil propensities are more 
forceful than education; that, in a word, primitive 
instincts are mightier than all the forces of civiliza- 
tion. But, "If the truth shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed/ 3 In that truth lies the hope of hu- 
manity. And. as an historical fact, in whatever nation 
or among whatever group of men the vitalizing and 
regenerating power <>f the Oospel has become a fact 
in persona] experience, there and there only have social 
ideas been evolved; there and there only have justice 
and mercy and brotherly love become recognized prin- 
ciples to which, however imperfect the realization may 
be, the conduct of life has been made to conform." 
"There is not," says Martineau, "a secular reform 
in the whole development of modern civilization which 
(if it is more than mechanical) has not drawn its 
inspiration from a religious principle." Certainly, it 
is not affirmed that the Gospel of Jesus can ever de- 
termine the value of wheat, or fix the price of coal. 
But what is more important, it will put an infinite 
value on the man who digs the coal. It will exalt 
the man "for whom Christ died." In doing this it 

9 8 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

necessarily makes all social good possible — civil free- 
dom, religious liberty, justice between men, whether 
rich or poor, employer or employee, and the pursuit 
of happiness for all. It will do all this by heighten- 
ing and ennobling man's consciousness of his own per- 
sonal worth and dignity as a child of God and heir 
of immortality. For the Gospel of Christ is not pri- 
marily for the salvation of men, but for the salvation 
of Man. The prophetic denunciation of those who 
"sold the righteous for silver, the needy for a pair of 
shoes/' (Amos 2:6), rings out clear and sharp in the 
Gospel, and so it comes about that wherever this Gos- 
pel has influenced the life of a people there will be 
found those who stand up for the rights of man against 
political tyranny or commercial greed. It is, there- 
fore, of the first importance that the Church should 
guard with jealousy the essential truths of the Gospel 
without which there would be no Gospel at all. And 
further, it is not only of prime importance that the 
Church should defend with energy these truths for 
the sake of religion itself; it is also of the deepest 
importance that they should be preserved unadulter- 
ated for the sake of humanity, for unless these truths 
permeate and influence the race there is no progress 
for the race. 



99 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 



VIII 

THUS far we have viewed the subject mainly from 

the standpoint of the Church. We may now consider 
it from the viewpoint of the liberal critic. The funda- 
mental question here Is: Mas the Church the right 
to stifle legitimate inquiry, that is, to prohibit scientific 
research which does not deny but investigates? 

If we can assume that any Church claims such a 
prerogative, the answer of reason, conscience, and his- 
tory must he in the negative. Certainly no Church 
can claim Scriptural grounds for such an assumption. 
Among Protestant Churches such an idea is impos- 
sible. No reason whatever could be given justifying 
the existence of colleges and universities or theological 
seminaries, or for the study of any Christian subject, 
if the only intellectual exercise allowable were the 
repetition of theological formulas of past periods, the 
memorizing of dogmatic utterances of ancient teachers. 
What is the intellect for? Our Lord has said, "Every 
scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven 
is like unto a man that is an householder, which 
bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." 
(Matthew 13 : 52.) We may even go farther and deny 
100 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

that any Church has the right to demand that the 
form or precise expressions in which the belief even 
of the Early Church cast its conceptions or interpre- 
tations of the Revelation of God should be under- 
stood and taught exactly as they were then taught 
and understood. To affirm the contrary is to deny 
the educating power of the Spirit of God in human 
history. The form in which any truth is embodied, 
as a kernel in a husk, is in its nature temporal and 
must in time undergo some change. Words take on 
new meanings with the expansion of thought. Some- 
times they resist and then they fall away, for the 
idea within must find adequate expression. Just as 
on the other hand when doctrines are discarded the 
terms expressing them drop out of use, as the word 
Theotokos forced upon the Church by the Councils 
of Ephesus and Chalcedon has been relegated with 
the doctrine it expressed to the theological dictionary. 
All teaching is limited by the knowledge of the 
teacher. Dogma is condensed history. It is the 
product of the collective reason of the age in which 
it was declared. Now, no age is omniscient. It, there- 
fore, follows that there never can be a final and per- 
fect statement of Divine truth. "We know in part, 
and we prophesy in part. But when that which is 
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be 

IOI 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

done away." (i Corinthians 13:9, 10.) No human 
\\<>rd can express the fullness of Divine thought. 
Revelation is always greater than its medium. Words 
are symbols. 1 Ience every age must present to itself 
its own interpretation of the historic facts from the 
standpoint of its own knowledge, its own experience, 
necessities, and providential position in time. It 
would be injurious to the Revelation of God to in- 
sist that the Church of the Twentieth Century must 
abide by the interpretations and the methods of in- 
terpretation of the Second, the Third, or the Fourth 
Century. If it did, which method of interpretation 
must it adopt — the Alexandrian or the Antiochean, 
the literal or the allegorical? Few will be willing 
to admit that livn.cus, Tertulhan, the Gregorys, 
Augustine, Luther, Calvin, or Wesley spoke the last 
word on any subject of Divine Revelation. They 
were holy men, providential men, but they were not 
inspired men. They were not infallible. Augustine 
not being well versed in Greek, built his Predestina- 
tion theology on a Latin text and buttressed his teach- 
ing that all men sinned in Adam with the text in 
Romans 5:12, in quo omnes peccaverunt, in whom 
all have sinned. What a terrible misfortune that stu- 
pendous blunder was to Christian theology! Who 
can estimate the suffering that teaching produced, the 
102 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

infidelity it occasioned, the contentions it engendered ! 
Professor J. Denney, commenting on this text in the 
Expositor's Greek Testament, says, "Nothing has been 
more pernicious in theology than the determination to 
define Sin in such a way that in all its damning im- 
port the definition should be applicable to infants; 
it is to this we owe the moral atrocities that have 
disfigured most creeds and in great part the idea of 
baptismal regeneration, which is an irrational, uneth- 
ical miracle, invented by men to get over a puzzle of 
their own making." What the Apostle did write was 
that death passed upon all men for the reason that — 
e<£ <5 — 7rai/res rjfxapTov — all have sinned. «£ w is not in 
quo, u in whom/' quo being a personal pronoun, whereas 
e^'w, which is for «n rovra orv y is an adverbial phrase, 
on this account, for the reason that, etc. Then Luther, 
it will be remembered, declared the Epistle of James 
to be an Epistle of straw. Calvin's Foreordination 
and Predestination, with his "horrible decrees" so elab- 
orately worked out in his Institutes, are repudiated now 
even by Presbyterians. Wesley tells us that the Apos- 
tolic Fathers were "not mistaken in their interpreta- 
tions of the Gospel of Christ; but that in all the 
necessary parts of it they were so assisted by the 
Holy Ghost as to be scarce capable of mistaking," 
an extraordinary statement considering Clement's 
103 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

teaching on the Resurrection and Ireneeus on the 

Millennium. Nol the Holy Spirit alone who gave 
the first word must have the last word. The Spirit 
of God is the soul of the Church. The Church is 
the medium oi the Spirit. The more holy the Church 
is, the more sensitive it is to the inspiration of the 
Spirit. No limitations can be placed on the influence 
of the Holy Ghost dwelling in a holy Church. Larger 
views of God, insight in holy mysteries, far-reaching 
thoughts resulting in revolution of thought in all 
realms of thought and action, are the results of the 
inspiration of God acting on holy men who brood 
over the messages of the Prophets, the works of our 
Lord, and the teachings of the Apostles. 

The old heresy that God set the universe going 
and then left it to operate under its own laws crops 
up too often in another form in our theological think- 
ing. Many seem to think that the Lord Jesus estab- 
lished His Church and then gave it over once for all 
to the transcendent superintendency of the Spirit. But 
this is scarcely a half-truth. The Spirit of God does 
govern the Church. But the Spirit of God is not 
only the Transcendent Spirit, He is also the Immanent 
Spirit. He is the Inner Life of the Church, the In- 
spirer of all Christian activity, the Guide to all truth 
essential to the building of the kingdom of God. We 
104 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

must never lose sight of the promise of our Lord to 
the Church. "When He, the Spirit of truth is come, 
He will guide you into all truth." That promise has 
never been canceled. The whole content of Divine 
Revelation did not drop into the minds of the Apostles 
at once. They had to learn many things not spoken 
to them by the Lord during His earthly ministry. 
But He would never leave them. Through the Spirit 
of Truth He would speak to them and to the Church 
to the end of time. "He shall guide you into all 
truth" — oS-rjyrjaet — He will show you the road to all 
truth. Their knowledge would be progressive. He 
who is guided is seeking; he has not attained. In a 
thousand manifold ways in thought, action, purpose, 
the silent workings of the Spirit would lead them 
finally into the Truth. We can not study the Book 
of Acts without perceiving that the Apostles were 
conscious of their limitations and did not rely upon 
personal infallibility or omniscience. It took Peter 
a long time to realize that "the middle wall of par- 
tition" was broken down between Jew and Gentile. 
In the great Council at Jerusalem when considering 
the question of circumcision the whole company of 
Apostles and disciples present gave earnest attention 
to the tremendous subject before them. No one of 
that company, however eminent or earnest, declared 
105 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

himself, as Prof. Swainson shows {Creeds of the 
Church), to be in possession of fullness of knowledge 
miraculously bestowed upon him, and that he was, 
therefore, read)- to decide without deliberation. The 
Apostolic company first heard the report of Paul and 
Barnabas how the Gospel had been received in Seleucia, 
Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycaonia; then they listened to 
the judgment of Peter and James ou the report, and 
when they had all agreed they then recognized in that 
unanimous agreement the mind of the Spirit. "It 
seemed good t<» the I Inly Ghost and to us." (Acts 

[5:28.) 

The life of the Apostle Paul is another illustra- 
tion of the gradual progress in the knowledge of 
Divine Revelation, and this unveiling of the things of 
the kingdom which the Apostle had experienced in 
his own case he wished for all the Churches in his 
care. To the Ephesians he writes, "That the God of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give 
unto them the spirit of wisdom and revelation, anoKa- 
Aityews, in the knowdedge, eveTnywo-ev, clear perception, 
discernment, internal knowledge of Him — that is, God ; 
that the eyes of their understanding being enlightened 
they might know the whole sweep of the purpose of 
God in Christ Jesus," (Ephesians 1 : 17), all of which 
means that the Church should grow into fuller knowl- 
106 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

edge of Divine truth, through the working of the Holy 
Ghost dwelling in them as a Church. Where, then, 
shall we draw the line? When did the Spirit of Il- 
lumination leave the Church — which Spirit should, ac- 
cording to our Lord's declaration, be forever the Guide 
of the Church? He has never left it. The Spirit of 
God is still with us, and the prayer of the Apostle for 
the Ephesian Church has power to quicken our hearts 
and minds as it had to arouse the spiritual energies 
of the Church at Ephesus. 

This truth of the Holy Spirit needs special em- 
phasis in the present time lest our God be to us a 
God afar off. It needs to become an energizing reality 
in the consciousness of the Church, lest instead of an 
intelligent, patient recognition of His blessed Presence 
we "limit the Holy One of Israel," and, as those who 
retained not the knowledge of God were by the laws 
of retribution turned aside to idols, we be forced by 
the same law to tie ourselves up to definitions of the 
passing day, and thus forestall any advance in appre- 
hension of Divine truth, or be able to create new 
apologetics to meet new assaults on Christian Faith. 
The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. Forms change. 
Thought stays. The only unchangeable thing in re- 
ligion is religion itself. 

(2) The Church, then, it would seem, can not by 
107 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

Divine authority prohibit free criticism of theological 

formularies. But does this apply also to the origin, 
composition, genuineness, and authenticity of the Holy 
Scriptures? How else did the Church itself originally 
come to separate genuine Gospels and Epistles from 
apochryphal writings but by the use of criticism? 
Why, for example, was the Epistle of Clement, which 
was read in all the Churches, excluded from the 
Canon? Why was the Book of Enoch, though quoted 
by an Apostle, excluded? A critical study of the Old 
Testament — indeed, a casual comparison of the Books 
of Kings and Chronicles — reveals sufficient ground for 
the documentary hypothesis of Higher Criticism, 
whether all the "assured results" of individual critics 
with their preconceptions of how history should have 
been made, are accepted or not. Adam Clarke, the 
great Commentator, and he is expressly mentioned 
here because he was the standard authority for three 
generations of preachers and teachers in interpretation 
of Scripture, declares that the Twenty-third Psalm is 
not David's ; he quotes with approval the statement 
of Prideaux that all the additions and interpolations 
of the Old Testament were made by Ezra : that the 
Books of Kings and Samuel are a compilation out of 
public and private records : that those books were writ- 
ten during or after the Babylonish Captivity, and 
1 08 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

that the author, whoever he was, was not contemporary 
with the facts he relates. The Fifty-second chapter 
of Jeremiah, he intimates, is not the work of that 
Prophet. His comparisons of the Hebrew and Sep- 
tuagint show his critical spirit, and in many places 
he goes as far as most modern critics of moderate 
type would care to go. For example, in his notes on 
Second Kings 8 : 26, he says : "After all, here is a most 
manifest contradiction, that can not be removed by 
having recourse to violent modes of solution. I am 
satisfied the reading of Second Chronicles 22 : 2 is a 
mistake. . . . And may we not say, with Calmet, 
which is the most dangerous: to acknowledge that 
transcribers have made some mistakes in copying the 
Sacred Books, or to acknowledge that there are con- 
tradictions in them and then to have recourse to solu- 
tions that can yield no satisfaction to any unpreju- 
diced mind?" Then again, in the important field of 
Textual Criticism, how shall we be able to decide be- 
tween variant readings ? The Apostle Peter ( 1 Peter 
2:6, 8) quotes Isaiah 28; 16 and 8: 14, following the 
Septuagint, but that version differs from the Hebrew. 
Compare again Acts 7 : 42, 43 with the Hebrew and 
vSeptuagint of Amos 5 : 25-27, and these two with 
each other. Where is "Sakkut" and "Kewan" of the 
Hebrew text in either the Septuagint or the Acts? 
109 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

In the Septuagint we have "tabernacle of Moloch and 

the star of your god Raiphan;" in the Acts we read, 
"The tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god 
Rompha." Observe further, in the Hebrew we read, 
"And I will carry you into captivity beyond Damas- 
cus." In the Septuagint it reads, "And 1 will carry 
you away beyond Damascus/ 1 but in the Acts we read, 
"And I will carry you away beyond Babylon" In 
questions of verbal inspiration what will be done with 
variations in texts And since correct teaching de- 
pends upon correct interpretation, and this upon a true 
text, how important it is that genuine criticism shall 
have unfettered freedom! 

Then, if we take up the New Testament, perplex- 
ing questions immediately confront us here also. 
What were the sources <>f Luke's Gospel? Of Mat- 
thew's? Is the Fourth Gospel biography or reflection? 
history or theology? Is Mark's Gospel the base of 
the First and Third Gospels, or did Matthew borrow 
from Luke, or Luke from Matthew? Or, did they 
both use Mark and another source marked "Q" by- 
recent critics? Can we go behind the writers of the 
Gospels to find another Jesus than the Jesus they give 
us? Such questions inevitably arise, and it is im- 
possible to intelligently answer them, if they can be 
no 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

answered at all, except by the untramrneled exercise 
of scientific investigation. It would seem, then, that 
even to the most conservative critical study and inter- 
pretation of facts should not only be permitted, but 
enthusiastically encouraged. "We can do nothing 
against the truth, but for the truth." 



Ill 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 



IX 

(3) There is a difference, however, which it is 
well to note, between fact and interpretation of fact. 
The universe seems to be a rather conspicuous fact, 
hut explanations n\ it are quite numerous. Every 
school o\ philosophy has its Weltanschauung, and it 
is no discredit to dogmas that they are neither final 
nor infallible They are the best thought of the age 
producing them, an effort to express the inexpressible. 
Is there any one theory of the Atonement, the Moral, 
the Governmental, the Substitutional, or other, that 
all theologians will agree upon ? The patient investi- 
gators of doctrinal developments, then, must have, in 
the nature of things, the inalienable right to explore the 
thought underlying all symbols, to interpret the exact 
idea intended in the Holy Scriptures, and if his findings 
are contrary to the present teachings of the Church they 
are not to be met by proscriptive authority, but by better 
scholarship. The Church is pledged to facts, but not 
to theories. Every serious thinker has the right within 
the Church to examine and explain grounds of belief, 
providing he does not deny the facts which are the 
objects of belief. Certainly neither Augustine, nor 
112 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

Calvin, nor Wesley had any Divine right to exercise 
their critical thought, which same right does not belong 
to every religious thinker and every Critical Scholar 
of the modern day. 

(4) But the right to interpret includes the right 
to investigate. This will not be denied. We must 
know before we can judge. Not every one is entitled 
to an opinion on a scientific subject. The value of 
any one's opinion upon any subject depends upon his 
knowledge of the subject. It is utterly useless for 
any one to pretend to interpret the Old Testament 
as an authority who is unacquainted with the labors 
of Archaeological experts — the British Museum alone 
has published twenty-six volumes folio of the Cunei- 
form Inscriptions from Babylonian texts. What will 
one do as an interpreter who is ignorant of the vast lit- 
erature resulting from the discoveries of these experts 
and the application of texts Grecian, Phoenician, Egyp- 
tian, Babylonian, to parallel texts in the Bible? And 
how inadequate must that New Testament scholarship 
be which is innocent of the rich finds of recent explor- 
ers, and the critical works produced by such specialists 
as Ramsay, Crum, Deissmann, Grenfell, Harris, and 
others who have thrown new light on the New Testa- 
ment days! Once helpful works upon which the 
knowledge of our teachers was grounded are no longer 
8 II 3 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

of any special value. There is not, perhaps, even a 
Lexicon of the Greek Testament that is up to date. 
Even Cremer's great work is lacking here and there 
in the wider knowledge of recent research. For in- 
stance, opening Deissmann (Light from the Ancient 
Bast, p. 74) almost at random, there is the word 
aAAoyej^? (Luke 17:18), which Crcmer and other 
lexicographers say is confined to Biblical and Pa- 
tristic Greek, but Deissmann says: "The Roman au- 
thorities, however, in placing inscriptions on the marble 
barriers of the inner courts of the Temple at Jerusa- 
lem thought differently of the word, or they would 
not have employed it in a notice intended to be read 
by Gentiles, who were thereby threatened with death 
as the penalty for entering. One of these inscriptions 
was discovered by Clermont Ganneau in 1871. The 
stone on which it is cut — a substantial block, on which 
the eyes of Jesus and Saint Paul may often have 
rested — is now in the Imperial New Museum at Con- 
stantinople. The inscription begins as follows: 

Modern aAAoyei'?; 

1 LET NO FOREIGNER, 
etc. 

Many other words which, according to the Lexicons 

are to be found only in the Bible, Deissmann shows 

114 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

from inscriptions to be quite common. But suppose 
that a sincere scholar in his studies of this vast lit- 
erature from Babylonian cylinders, inscriptions, etc., 
should find parallels to narratives in the Book 
of Genesis, which are purely the mythical form of 
primitive thought brooding over the mystery of Cre- 
ation, that certain Babylonian myths are often men- 
tioned in the Bible; and that even the Messianic Idea, 
so strongly developed in the prophetic period of Is- 
rael's history, reached down to the very roots of these 
Ancient Myths, indicating that from the beginning 
there has been in humanity the thought and expecta- 
tion of a Deliverer — should this investigator be com- 
pelled to throw away the results of his investigations 
and leave this accumulated wealth of material for 
others outside the Church? Would this not mean 
that scholarship has no standing in the Church? 
Would it not be better to meet such conclusions by 
better scholarship, by showing, if it were possible, that 
the modern definition of myth is a revival of the 
method of late pagan philosophers who, ashamed of 
the character of the gods, interpreted or rather read 
into the myths whatever was necessary to^ show that 
they contained profound truths not discerned by the 
multitude? That Plato and Cicero and all the Chris- 
tian Fathers of the Ante-Nicene Period, wiho had them- 
ii5 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

selves been pagan philosophers or were well versed in 
mythology, denied these myths contained any truth 
and denounced them as false and shameful? At any 
rate, whether such an answer would suffice or not, it 
is certain that if these ancient myths did embody tra- 
ditions of a Redeemer revealed in prophecy to the 
fallen pair ill Eden, denying the rights of untram- 
meled investigation will neither destroy the myth nor 
rob it of its significance in the religious education of 
the race. There is a wide difference between en- 
dorsing the conclusions of science and hastily incor- 
porating them into the belief of the Church, and re- 
fusing to grant liberty of inquiry and presentation of 
results. 

But here again, to keep an even scale it is only 
simple justice, which Liberal Critics should take note 
of, to state that much of the distrust and much of the 
antagonism manifested toward radical Higher Criti- 
cism is not so much owing to the fear of results or 
even prejudice in favor of former views of the Bible, 
as it is resentment against the spirit and tone of Criti- 
cism, the assumptions and half-baked theories of 
sciolists whose limitations do not prevent them from 
imposing upon others under the name of science their 
individual opinions. Even sometimes a famous scholar 
will invent a definition of science and rule out all 
116 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

others who do not agree with his views on the ground 
that they do not recognize the "results of science." 
Wellhausen, for instance, says, "About the origin of 
Deuteronomy there is still less dispute: in all circles 
where appreciation, (Ancrkennung — recognition), of 
scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recog- 
nized that it was composed in the same age in which 
it was discovered." (Proleg, p. 9.) That is: All who 
do not believe this do not appreciate scientific work. 
But this condemnation would include such scholars 
as Dillman, who declares it is absurd to suppose that 
the priestly and ceremonial laws were written during 
the Exile, which this theory of Wellhausen involves, 
when there was no worship. When we turn our at- 
tention to New Testament critics, especially such as 
deny the historicity of the Gospel narratives, as for 
example, the Resurrection of our Lord, the same dog- 
matic assurance confronts us. Read the arguments of 
those who propose and defend the Vision Theory, the 
Swoon Theory, the Telegram Theory, the Apparition 
Theory, the Mythological Theory, and several other 
Theories, all of which are pure inventions of ingenious 
theorizers, mere jugglers, who could just as easily have 
invented any other theory and made it look just as 
plausible and, in our opinion, just as absurd, as the 
theory they did invent, and then seriously consider 
117 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

whether "in circles where appreciation of scientific re- 
sults can be looked for' 1 such products of reckless 
imagination are entitled to recognition. 

The Church is not to be criticised for refusing 
recognition to such so-called "free thought," since 
such "thought" is not free any more than prejudice 
is free. One may fill bulky volumes with learned 
notes, and may give other evidence of being widely 
read, and vet possess very poor judgment. Sir Wil- 
liam M. Ramsay, in the preface of his destructive re- 
view (The First Christian Century) of Dr. Moffat's 
Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 
says: "As a German classical scholar remarked 
. . . some years ago, the methods of Biblical 
Criticism are coming to be a jest among philologists. 
This book is a protest in the name of history and of 
literature against the revival of a method in Criticism 
which I had supposed to be antiquated and discred- 
ited." Even Professor Harnack is compelled to utter 
emphatic protest and even ridicule against reckless 
treatment of serious subjects. "Men soar away," he 
says, "into sublime discussions concerning the mean- 
ing of the 'kingdom of God,' 'the Son of Man,' 'Mes- 
siahship,' etc., and occupy themselves with investiga- 
tions into the 'history of religion,' and with problems 
of genuineness, in the light of 'Higher Criticism' (as 
118 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

if the critics were inspired with absolute knowledge 
of historical matters from some secret source), while 
the 'lower' problems, whose treatment involves real 
scavenger's labor in which one is almost choked with 
dust, are passed by on the other side. Or when this 
is not the case, the investigation is still never carried 
far enough; it breaks off prematurely, and the critic 
rests satisfied with work only half done." Harnack 
then goes on to ridicule with righteous indignation 
those who thoroughly investigate nothing, but accept 
anything. "They are like reeds swaying with the 
blasts of the most extreme and mutually exclusive 
hypotheses, and find everything in this connection 
which is offered them Very worthy of consideration !' 
. . . If, therefore, one only keeps hold of all the 
reins, naturally with a loose hand, one is shielded from 
the reproach of not being up to date, and this is more 
important by far than knowledge of the facts them- 
selves, which indeed do not so much concern us, see- 
ing that in this Twentieth Century we must of course 
wean ourselves from a contemptible dependence upon 
history in matters of religion." ( The Sayings of Jesus, 
Introduction, XII.) 

If facts are facts, the Church has everything to 
gain from investigation and nothing to lose. For a 
hundred years the most searching criticism has been 
119 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

brought to bear on the historicity of the New Testa- 
ment, and with what results? This, that more vividly 
real than ever before the Lord Christ of the Gospels 
stands before us as if time and space had been pushed 
aside and He again is seen as He was seen by His 
disciples, and is apprehended more clearly in all the 
glory of His mission as the Redeemer of men and 
Creator of the kingdom of God than He was seen or 
understood by the Church in any previous age. It 
should also be understood that this searching criticism 
has discovered no material fact which was not gen- 
erally known to the Church. Many New Testament 
questions which are raised to-day were discussed in 
the Early Church, and we may rest assured that the 
Christians of the Apostolic days had very much more 
knowledge — intimate, personal knowledge — of the facts 
in our Lord's life than appears in the Gospels. Forty 
Gospels could have been written as well as four. Not 
every detail in that Life could be given, as the Apostle 
John suggests. But a Priscilla coming from the Chris- 
tian community in Rome could teach an Apollos "the 
way of the Lord more perfectly" before any Gospel 
had been written. It is interesting to note also that to 
that same community the Apostle Paul in his Epistle 
sends his greetings and says, "Salute Rufus." But 
who was Rufus ? Evidently he was well known among 

120 






IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

the Christians in Rome. Now Mark, it is said, wrote 
his Gospel in Rome. But in that Gospel (15,2) he 
mentions a "Rufus" and an ''Alexander" as if they 
were well known to the Church in Rome, since he 
seems to think that the mere mention of their names 
is all that is necessary. "And they compel one Simon, 
a Cyrenian who passed by, coming out of the country, 
the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear His cross." 
There is every reason to believe that this is the same 
Rufus. But what detailed personal information could 
Rufus impart to the Church in Rome concerning the 
crucifixion and the mighty events of those days which 
are not at all written in the Gospels ! "Christ was 
crucified! My father carried His cross!" 

But suppose that further investigation will show 
that John did not write the Fourth Gospel ; would such 
a discovery invalidate the facts recorded in that Gos- 
pel ? Is it absolutely necessary that John the Apostle 
and not John the Presbyter should have written it? 
If, then, no sane man will rest his faith in the record 
of Jesus on the supposition that John wrote the record, 
or that he must have written it, neither will he risk 
his soul on the belief that Moses wrote the Pentateuch 
as it is, or that there was only one Isaiah, or that the 
Book of Daniel was not a product of the Maccabean 
age. It is a fine thing to distinguish between the 
121 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

kernel and the husk, the essential and the non-essential. 
What, for example, has the Mosaic Authorship of 
Deuteronomy in its present form to do with the cruci- 
fixion and the resurrection of our Lord? Grant that 
John was not the author of the Fourth Gospel — which 
we think he was, notwithstanding the long-drawn con- 
troversy to the contrary — grant that even the Synoptic 
Gospels are of unknown authorship, still did not all 
four Gospels originate in the Church, were known by 
the Church, indorsed by the Church, and preserved 
by the Church to this day? And was not the Church 
out of which the Gospels came, out of which this en- 
tire New Testament came, composed of witnesses of 
Jesus and the disciples of those who were His wit- 
nesses? Is it not a fact that even in ioo A. D. there 
were Christians in the Church at Corinth who were 
members there during Paul's lifetime. Do we not know 
from Clemens Romanus' Letter to the Church at Cor- 
inth that some Presbyters who were appointed by Paul 
himself or by other Apostles were yet living in the 
Church there in A. D. 96 ? Is there any scholar with 
a reputation to lose who will deny these facts? Were 
those ministers of the Church at Corinth ignorant of 
the New' Testament writings and of their origin? 
How, then, could Clement write to them, "Take up 
the Epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle?" 
122 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

Suppose further, and beyond this we need not go, 
that criticism should show beyond reasonable doubt 
that the Bible in every word is not inerrant or in- 
fallible, as differences in duplicate statements in the 
opinion of critics seem to indicate, would such a con- 
clusion affect in any degree the infallible truth of God 
which is contained in the Bible and nowhere else re- 
lating to the nature and the destiny of man, his sin, 
his redemption, his eternal joy in harmony with God? 
Christ and His Apostles spoke the words of eternal 
life, as Moses and the Prophets assert the morals of 
Jehovah, and shall we deny freedom of inquiry and 
Christian encouragement to those who affirm that it 
is this word that is infallible; that it is this word 
that is Revelation, and not mere statistics of armies 
or of tribes of people which do not touch at all the 
moral life of humanity? Nothing can destroy facts. 
The historicity of the facts of Revelation is not af- 
fected in any conceivable degree by rigid and elab- 
orated doctrines of infallibility or verbal inspiration. 
No truth of God depends upon its form of expres- 
sion. The spiritual test of any truth is its vitality. 
The Word of God is a Living Word. It is infallible. 
It is validated in history and personal experience by 
the response it awakens in the soul of man. 

(5) But if one is to investigate he must be free to 
123 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

investigate. Among the questions put to candidates 
for Holy Orders is this: "Will you be diligent in 
prayers and in reading of the Holy Scriptures and in 
such studies as help to the knowledge of the same, 
laying aside the study of the world and the flesh ?" 
Candidates are exhorted "to consider how studious ye 
ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures," 
"to draw all your cares and studies this way," "that 
by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures ye 
may wax riper and stronger in your ministry." The 
ministerial candidate is thus under solemn obligation 
to perform this duty. But is not that a questionable 
morality which encourages critical study of the Holy 
Scriptures, or of Church history, with the understand- 
ing that that only shall be discovered which we want 
discovered ? that conclusion only is to be reached which 
we have already determined shall be reached? Noth- 
ing is more detrimental to truth than fear for the 
truth. No one is afraid that the sky will fall. Con- 
fidence in God's Word should be just as real, for it 
argues a secret fear that unbelief after all may destroy 
some foundation stone when we attempt to restrict in- 
vestigation of all the facts which are involved in Divine 
Revelation. The Lord Jesus does not seem to have 
been afraid of truth, else He would never have re- 
vealed it. He never would have invited His antag- 
124 






IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

onists to "search the Scriptures." His holy Apostles 
were not afraid of the truth, else they never would 
have preached it. They would not have commanded 
those who "searched the Scriptures daily to see if these 
things were so." What they were afraid of, and what 
all sincere lovers of Divine truth are ever afraid of, is 
the distortion of truth, the suppression of truth. That 
there is ground for such fear is very evident when in 
the study of Comparative Religion Christianity is pre- 
sented by those who never experienced personal re- 
ligion in the Christian sense, as only one of the many 
religions of earthly origin; when in experimental psy- 
chology religion is traced to nervous activity or physio- 
logical functioning; when the Incarnation, the Atone- 
ment, and Regeneration are read in a Christian sense 
into the sacred Books, legends, and myths of Ethnic 
Faiths. What freedom of thought is that which will 
tolerate with intellectual sympathy the aberrations of 
a Cheyne, or a Pfleiderer, discoursing solemnly under 
the aegis of scientific theology on the relations exist- 
ing between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and tlie 
solar myths of Marduk, Adonis, or Osiris, or explain- 
ing the correspondences between the Lord's Supper and 
Mithra worship, or the Eleusinian Mysteries? Such 
"science," such "scholarship" bears about the same 
relation to that genuine scholarship which is conscious 
125 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

of its responsibility for the moral effect of its con- 
clusions as reckless newspaper Jingoism does to gen- 
uine statesmanship. Certainly no body of thinkers 
who take religion seriously can expect to advance the 
kingdom of God by such alienation of so-called schol- 
arship. One might as well attempt to set the world 
on fire with a lightning-bug. 

Freedom in investigation is the inalienable right 
of every serions-minded scholar. This right may not 
be restricted by an arbitrary exercise of ecclesiastical 
authority: hut. on the other hand, the Church is under 
no obligation to tolerate within its membership that 
kind of investigation the avowed purpose of which is 
to destroy rather than to build. Truth is more valuable 
than freedom. An arbitrary exercise of ecclesiastical 
power which suppresses that freedom of thought which 
does not deny the essential truths of religion, nor by 
any logical inference undermines these truths, is itself 
destructive to the well-being of the Church. The value 
of the individual to the social organism is his contri- 
bution to its welfare. To the extent, then., that the 
individual is interfered with and his freedom of action 
is curtailed, to that extent the organism loses and the 
individual himself fails to reach his highest develop- 
ment, which is the reason why he becomes a member 
of the Social Organism at all. In like manner the 
126 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

value of the individual member to the Church is his 
contribution to its health and efficiency of his spiritual 
experience, his consecration of talents, social, intel- 
lectual, administrative — his ability to aid the Church 
in its self-development and the extension of its influ- 
ence. But if an arbitrary exercise of power, incited 
by the clamor of ignorance or the alarm of Conserv- 
atism, mistaking petrified principles for living truth, 
should suppress his activities and prohibit his re- 
searches in fields dreaded or unknown to those who 
happen to "sit in Moses' seat," the Church becomes 
impoverished through the loss of those very gifts 
which would enable it to deepen its own life, which 
would enrich its own thought, and which would extend 
its frontier in all realms of knowledge for the further- 
ance of the kingdom of God. That Church must for- 
ever be the strongest in which, its spirituality being 
taken for granted, there is combined the most effective 
authority on the part of the Church and the largest 
freedom on the part of the member. 

Let it never be forgotten that the Church which 
encourages free inquiry the least and taxes faith the 
most becomes itself the best promoter of infidelity. 
No Church is more jealous of its authority; none more 
swift and vigorous in the use of it; none more con- 
servative in its theology; none making so great and 
127 



FREEDOM OE THOUGHT 

ever-increasing- demands on the faith of its people, and 
none more determined and persistent in its resistance 
to every form oi modern progress, than the Latin 
Church. And yet there is no Church out of which 
in all lands there have arisen more Freethinkers and 
Infidels and against which in the circles of Science and 
Culture there has arisen so great a revolt against its 
teaching's, traditions, and dogmas. In Italy, among 
the Modernists, such eminent men as Abbe Romolo 
Murri and Minnochi; in France, Abbe Loisy, M. Le 
Roy, Pere Laberthonniere, Battifol, Houtin; in Eng- 
land, the late Jesuit Father Tyrrell ; in Germany, Pro- 
fessor Schnitzer, Hugo Koch, the late Doctor Schell 
of the University of Wurzburg, all of whom repre- 
sent large following, not to mention men of science 
and letters, testify to the inutility of mere authority 
when the rights of free inquiry are sacrificed on the 
altar of ultra-Conservatism. The individual has his 
rights, his natural rights, which the Church did not 
give him and which it can not take away. Among 
these is the right to discover the truth of things, to 
discern between that which is true and that which is 
false. It is quite true the Church may expel him for 
insisting upon such rights, and itself become the heretic 
and the greater loser, but there is no institution known 
among men in which such rights should be more 
128 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

stoutly defended than in the Church itself, because no 
institution is so thoroughly committed to the knowl- 
edge, the defense, and the preaching of the truth as 
is the Church of God. And is there any field of in- 
quiry in which one has so much right to pursue critical 
investigation as in the Word of God? But what be- 
comes of his freedom if the arbitrary exercise of ec- 
clesiastical authority, jealous of traditional interpreta- 
tion, puts a finish to his labors? And who or what 
can compensate for the loss of sacred learning in the 
Church when the critic, the historian, and the philos- 
opher are no longer at liberty to go contrary to re- 
ceived opinions, should their investigations result in 
that, but must pursue their labors in opposition to the 
Church and thus expose its weakness in the error of 
its teaching? For three hundred years the seventh 
verse of the Eirst Epistle of John has stood in our 
Authorized Bible and has done much service as a proof 
text for the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. It is 
now known to be spurious. The verse is not found 
in any of the one hundred and eighty manuscripts of 
the Epistle, nor was it quoted by any of the Greek 
Fathers in the Arian Controversy, in which it certainly 
would have been used. But what of the effect of the 
injudicious zeal of those who, stoutly contending for 
its genuineness, endeavored to set aside the results of 

9 I29 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

honest criticism? The effect was injurious to the doc- 
trine as stated in the Athanasian Creed. Who does 
not know of the marvelous effect upon European his- 
tory and the growth of the Papacy as an Imperial 
Power, of the so-called Donation of Constantine in 
the forgeries known as the False Decretals? Then 
again, for nearly a thousand years the theology of 
the Roman Church (that is. of all Europe) was pro- 
foundly influenced by the writings of Dionysius, St. 
Paul's convert at Athens, and even so late as 1897 
the authority of these writings was defended by mem- 
bers of the Church of England. Thanks to the labors 
of critics over long periods, the Areopagite writings 
are now known to be the work of a Greek Bishop, 
who borrowed the whole of them from a heathen 
philosopher, Proclus, about 490 A. D. No Church 
can safely suppress the free investigations of scholars. 
On the contrary, by encouraging the boldest research 
it can separate itself by anticipation from whatever 
may be found to be false, and thus confirm the faith 
of men in those things which it declares to be true. 






130 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 



Now, gathering up the threads of all that has been 
said, what is the conclusion of the whole matter ? In 
this brief survey we have seen that the principle of 
free inquiry was recognized by our Lord and His 
Apostles and by the Early Church. That the Church 
that preaches the Gospel, and would keep pace with the 
progress of human knowledge while defending the un- 
doubtable truth of the Gospel, must also acknowledge 
the right of free inquiry within the Church. These 
facts being before us, there is, it would seem, no other 
conclusion which would be just to all the facts in the 
case than this : The spirit of denial is the limi- 
tation OF Freedom. He who denies the essential 
truths of the Gospel can have no rational expectation 
of indorsement from a Church set for the propagation 
of that Gospel, for that Church has the same right 
to reject him as he claims to question its teachings. 
He who in the fear of God and with a sincere desire 
to enrich the Church with the results of patient 
thought would pursue scientific studies should have 
no fear of the arbitrary exercise of authority chilling 
his enthusiasm or of repudiating his conclusions. A 
131 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

sincere man face to face with Truth can do no other 
than acknowledge the supreme authority of Truth 
and. if condemned by the Church of To-day, appeal 
in all humility to the Church of To-morrow. 

Perhaps no better illustration of the principles and 
the meaning of this and of all that has been said here 
can be found in Church history than the principles 
and practice of Wesley. With Wesley the test of 
orthodoxy was the Cross. All dogmas, all creeds, 
formularies, systems, or schools of theologic thought 
were tested not from the standpoint of history how- 
ever ancient, nor from the standpoint of ecclesiastical 
authority however venerable, but from the point of 
the Cross experienced in the soul and witnessed there 
by the Holy Spirit. There, in the soul of man, Wesley 
taught, the Spirit of the living God creates a con- 
viction that the Son of God has power to forgive and 
put away sin. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to this 
fundamental truth is contrary to the meaning of God, 
for such is the purpose of the Atonement of the Son 
of God, redemption from sin and holiness unto eternal 
life and glory. Of what value, then, were creeds and 
formularies, theories of salvation, philosophies of re- 
ligion, if they did not minister to this conviction, 
confirm it, or even square with it? This inborn con- 
viction, however, is not, in the thought of Wesley, 
132 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

independent of authority in itself. It is capable of 
verification, but by Scripture and reason. It can not, 
of course, determine historical events, dates of docu- 
ments, scientific questions. It can determine nothing 
outside of itself, but it does afford a starting-point 
from which the investigation can proceed to test the 
value of dogma, and to discern between truth and 
error in the multiplicity of opinions which are a stand- 
ing reproach to Christian men, an indictment of their 
spirit, their intelligence or their judgment, a stumbling- 
block to faith and a barrier to the progress of Chris- 
tianity. 

Wesley applied this principle, this religious spirit 
in his own life as a preacher of the doctrines which 
he announced — doctrines new to that period in the 
Church of England, but not new to the Apostolic 
Church, nor to the Fathers of the Ante-Nicene 
Church, nor to the Holy Scriptures. At a Confer- 
ence which met in London, June 25, 1774, he met 
with his assistants, all clergymen of the Church of 
England, "to consider, (1) What to teach; (2), How 
to teach ; ( 3 ) , What to do ; i. e., to regulate our doc- 
trine, discipline, and practice." The principles which 
were to regulate their considerations — principles if 
applied by radical critics of the present day in their 
investigations might save Biblical Criticism from 
133 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

"many a blunder and foolish notion" — were "that all 
things he considered as in the immediate presence of 

(".Mil: that wo may meet with a single eye, and as 
little children who have everything to learn; that every 
point which is proposed may he examined to the foun- 
dation; that every person may speak freely whatever 
i< in his heart; and that every question which may 
arise should he thoroughly debated and settled." 

Question: "Wed we he fearful of doing this? 
What are we afraid of? Of our overturning our 
first principles? If they are false, the sooner they are 
overturned the better. If they are true they will bear 
the strictest examination. Let us all pray for a will- 
ingness to receive light, to know of every doctrine 
whether it he of G >d." 

Could any searcher for truth he more sincere, more 
scientifically thoroughgoing in probing every question 
to its "foundation," more willing to surrender previ- 
ously formed judgments, or more open to conviction 
resulting from wider knowledge? Methodism should 
ever be grateful to a superintending Providence that 
its Founder under God was of such intellectual caliber, 
of such broad scholarship, and of such spiritual devo- 
tion to Divine truth for truth's sake. Here is scien- 
tific method, liberty of thought, freedom of inquiry, 
and a humble "willingness to receive light, to know 
134 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

every doctrine whether it be of God," which suggests 
ideal attitudes and conditions of all true scholarship, 
and against which no Church can rightly or safely 
exercise restraining power. 

In these Conferences, during which for three years 
every essential doctrine was discussed on the principles 
agreed upon at the first, such doctrines as Repentance, 
Justifying Faith, Justification, the Witness of the 
Spirit, there must necessarily have been some diversity 
of judgments, but all these were settled on the basis 
of other principles also presented by Wesley at the 
first Conference bearing on the subject of Authority. 

Question: "How far does each of us agree to 
submit to the judgment of the majority?" 

Answer : "In speculative things each can only sub- 
mit so far as his judgment shall be convinced. In 
every practical point each will submit so far as he 
can without wounding his conscience." 

Question: "Can a Christian submit any further 
than this to any number of men on earth?" 

Answer : "It is undeniable he can not : either 
Council, Bishop, or Convocation. And this is that 
grand principle of private judgment on which all the 
Reformers proceeded. 'Every man must judge for 
himself; because every man must give an account of 
himself to God.' " 

135 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

How consistently Wesley practiced these principles 
in one of the most serious events of his life may be 
seen in his thoroughly critical work on the Revision 
of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England 
for use by the Methodists in North America, then 
about to be organized into a Church separate from 
the jurisdiction of the Church of England. In this 
Revision he exercised great liberty of thought in omit- 
ting from the Formularies of the National Church, 
to which he was devotedly attached, such articles as: 
"The Descent into Hell ; The Three 
Creeds; Of Works Before Justification; 
Of Christ Alone Without Sin ; Of Pre- 
destination and Election; Of Obtaining 
Salvation Only by the Name of Christ; 
Of the Authority of the General Coun- 
cils; Of Ministering in the Congrega- 
tion; Of the Unworthiness of Ministers 
Which Hinders Not the Effect of the 
Sacrament ; Of the Wicked Which Eat 
Not the Body of Christ in the Use of 
the Lord's Supper; Of Excommunicate 
Persons, How They Are to be Avoided ; 
Of the Homilies; Of the Consecration 
of Bishops and Ministers; Of the Civil 
Magistrates." 

136 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

In several of the Articles which he did not retain 
he made such omissions as in his judgment were neces- 
sary to reconcile the Article with his Arminian the- 
ology, or were unnecessary in a Christian Church. 
Can we fully understand the broad conceptions of 
Christianity implied in such a revision of the Articles 
of the Church of England? That was a daring in- 
tellect which undertook such responsibility. If we 
would at all appreciate the work of Wesley in this 
respect we must study the theological significance of 
the Articles he struck out, their relation to the his- 
torical position of the Church of England in the 
Reformation, their relation to the theological thought 
of his time, their place in the creeds of Christendom, 
in the faith of the people, and all this subject to the 
criticism and attack of theologians and churchmen. 

But it was not only in doctrinal theology that 
Wesley exercised his Christian freedom. Not since 
the violation of the Canonical Laws of Christendom 
by English Reformers in the Consecration of Parker 
to the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury was there a 
bolder act by a clergyman of the Church of England 
than the consecration by Wesley of Doctor Coke, and 
thereby the founding by him of an Episcopal form 
of government for the Methodists in North America. 
It was not an ill-considered act, nor was it one in line 
137 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

with his early education. Church training-, or the 
prejudices which High Church views of the differences 
between the established Church and Dissenters gen- 
erate. Wesley's ordination of the presbyter Coke to 
the Episcopacy was, as all exercise of religious freedom 
should be, the result of continuous investigation and 
prayerful consideration. In his letter dated Bristol, 
September 10, 17S4, giving reasons for this momentous 
act, he says: "Lord King's Account of the Primitive 
Church convinced me, many years ago, that Bishops 
and Presbyters are the same order and consequently 
have the same right to ordain. For many years I 
have been importuned from time to time to exercise 
this right, by ordaining part of our traveling preach- 
ers. But I have still refused not only for peace' sake, 
but because I was determined, as little as possible, to 
violate the established order of the National Church 
to which I belonged. But the case is widely different 
between England and North America. Here there are 
Bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In America 
there are none, and but few parish ministers; so that 
for some hundred miles together there is none either 
to baptize or to administer the Lord's Supper. Here, 
therefore, my scruples are at an end; and I conceive 
myself at full liberty, as I violate no order and in- 

138 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

vade no man's rights, by appointing and sending 
laborers into the harvest." 

A more reasonable declaration of personal liberty 
in the Gospel was never written. What recognition 
of established order is here! What self-restraint! 
What respect for law, for the rights of others ! What 
sensitive regard for the peace of the Church ! Wesley 
is no heresiarch declaiming against ecclesiastical au- 
thority and loudly asserting his own infallibility. "If 
any one will point out," he writes, "a more rational 
and Scriptural way of feeding and guiding those poor 
sheep in the wilderness I will gladly embrace it." 
Wesley as a Liberal may well be the model for all 
who declare for liberty of thought in the Christian 
Church. "The Methodists alone do not insist on your 
holding this or that opinion. ... I do not know 
any other religious society, either ancient or modern, 
wherein such liberty of conscience is allowed, or has 
been allowed since the age of the Apostles, . . . 
I have no more right to object to a man for holding 
a different opinion from me, than I have to differ with 
a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own 
hair; but if he takes his wig off, and begins to shake 
the powder about my eyes, I shall consider it my duty 
to get quit of him as soon as possible." In the Meth- 
139 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

odist Episcopal Church, as a result of his toleration, 
no member can be disciplined for holding any opinion, 
but only for sowing dissensions by inveighing against 
its doctrines and Discipline. The law of the Church 
takes cognizance not of what a man thinks, but of what 
he does. It should not be inferred from all this, how- 
ever, that Wesley was indifferent to creeds or formulas 
of Christian doctrine. He was no Latitudinarian. He 
was too well balanced for that. While his tolerance 
in opinions which were purely speculative was senten- 
tiouslv expressed in the saying, "We think and let 
think/ 1 no man of his time or of any time more stoutly 
maintained the fundamental doctrines of evangelical 
Christianity. S< » strict was he in his orthodoxy that 
in 1763 the doctrinal standards which Wesley had 
compiled were inserted in the Trust Deed for all 
Chapels of the Wesleyan Societies. Under this Deed, 
issued by Court of Chancery, the trustees "Shall per- 
mit John Wesley and such persons as he shall from 
time to time appoint, and at all times during his natural 
life, and no other persons, to have and enjoy the free 
use and benefit of the said premises, and the said John 
Wesley and such other persons as he appoints may 
therein preach and expound God's Holy Word. Pro- 
vided always that the said persons preach no other 
doctrine than is contained in Mr. Wesley's Notes upon 
140 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

the New Testament, and four Volumes of his Ser- 
mons." 

These Standards of Doctrine, which are also stand- 
ard of authority in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
are not intended, however, and never were intended 
to be prohibitive of doctrinal development or of scien- 
tific research. In the Notes to the New Testament 
Wesley departed from the Authorized Version when- 
ever he deemed it necessary, as for example, John 6 : 64, 
Acts 4:27, Jude 4, 1 Peter 1:19, 20, Revelation 
22: 19. It can not be, therefore, that he intended 
nor has the Church ever supposed that Exegetical 
Scholarship or Textual Criticism should be confined 
forever to his particular translations of the Greek 
text, or the particular text he used. These Standards 
are not prohibitions, they are safeguards. The Atone- 
ment, Faith, Repentance, the New Birth, the Witness 
of the Spirit, are not to be denied nor explained away, 
but apart from this full liberty is still the privilege 
of all students of the Word who* would pursue their 
labors in scientific or theological investigation. 

Methodism is no mere sect. It is not the product 
of human ambition seeking the highest places and flung 
down into isolation from all that has gone before it; 
it is not the fruit of heresy assailing the Historic 
Faith of the Universal Church; it is not the result 
141 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

of narrow prejudice, sectional passions running riot 
among- people ignorant of the history, the theology, 
and the devotion of the centuries. It is one in faith, 
economy, and piety with the Church of the Ages. 
Midway between the Anglican and other Protestant 
Churches it stands as a revival of Primitive Chris- 
tianity, that is. of the Early Church, the Church of 
the Apost«»lic Fathers. Its doctrines do not run hack 
t^ the Reformation and stop there as if originated 
there by the divisive contentions ^i that time; nor is 
its distinctive theological heritage traceable, as an emi- 
nent English scholar affirmed at the Ecumenical Con- 
ference at Toronto, t<> Luther, Calvin, and Augustine, 
hut through the great Divines of the Church of Eng- 
land. Bishops Bull, Andrewes, Laud, Jewel, and the 
Cambridge Platonists to the Churches of Gaul and the 
Creek Fathers, who knew nothing of the Augustinian 
doctrines of Particular Redemption, Election, Fore- 
ordination, Predestination. The common assumption 
that because Wesley felt his heart "strangely wanned" 
while listening to Luther's Preface to his Commentary 
on Galatians, which was read by Peter Bohler at a 
meeting in Aldersgate Street, he is therefore doc- 
trinally indebted to Luther is a great mistake. In 
1733, three years before he ever met Bohler, he 
preached at Saint Mary's, Oxford, a sermon which 
142 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

contains every distinctive doctrine he preached in later 
years. Thirty years after, in 1765, referring to this 
same sermon, he writes, "This sermon contained all 
that I now teach concerning salvation from all sin, 
and loving God with our undivided heart." Wesley 
always leaned to the Early Church, to the teachings 
of the Apostolic Fathers, whose lives he published, and 
their successors in the Ante-Nicene period. It is to 
the Greek Fathers that Wesley appeals in defense of 
the distinctive doctrines he proclaimed, spiritual re- 
generation, and the witness of the Spirit. And when 
he would draw up the General Rules for the conduct 
of the Societies still within the Church of England, 
or delineate their spiritual aims, it is to the writings 
of the Greek Fathers, to Clemens Alexandrinus, he 
has recourse. "Five or six-and-thirty years ago," he 
says, "I much admired the character of a perfect 
Christian drawn by Clemens Alexandrinus. Five or 
six-and-twenty years ago a thought came into my mind 
of drawing such a character myself, only in a more 
Scriptural manner, and mostly in the very words of 
Scripture: this I entitled 'The Character of a Meth- 
odist.' " The Psedagogus and the Stromata of Clemens 
of Alexandria are the true basis of the General Rules 
which are now embodied in the Constitution of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. Methodism, therefore, 
143 



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT 

is not. cither in its government or doctrines, a thing 
(^i yesterday. In its affinities, its teachings and wor- 
ship, using in its Ritual the Liturgy of the Church of 
England, modified from the ancient Liturgies of Eng- 
land and Gaul, which Liturgies themselves came down 
from the Greek Churches of Asia Minor, it is in all 
its sympathies one with Historic Christianity. At its 
very beginnings it determined to make the Bible as 
interpreted by the Church of England and the Primi- 
tive Church its sole Rule of Faith and practice; and 
in his Letters of Episcopal Orders delivered to Doc- 
tor Coke for the Societies in America which were to 
be organized into an Episcopal Church, he declared 
those Societies to be "at liberty to follow the Scrip- 
tures and the Primitive Church." The freedom of 
the Church in the morning of its career is the heritage 
of Methodism. 

Influenced consciously or unconsciously by these 
leanings and affinities, the notable characteristic of 
Methodism is that while faithful to the essential truths 
of the Gospel, as we have seen, it is in its ecclesiastical 
polity and range of teaching among the most compre- 
hensive Churches of Christendom. It is riveted to 
nothing but -the vital facts of Redemption. Its gov- 
ernment is elastic, adapting the Church to the needs 
of the changing times. Its worship is cast in no un- 
144 



IN RELIGIOUS TEACHING 

changeable molds, but is conformable to the spiritual 
needs of the people, with due regard to the unity of 
the Church in its solemn ministrations. It can not 
be, therefore, that narrow prejudices, provincial no- 
tions, and an unworthy fear for the truth of God as 
proclaimed by the Fathers, and which is the joy of all 
who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity should "crib, 
cabin, and confine" the freedom of scientific research, 
the inalienable right to investigate in all fields of 
philosophy, history, archaeology, and the ever-expand- 
ing domain of Biblical Study. The world is the field 
of the Church. Nothing human or divine is alien to 
the Church. Art, Literature, and Science should have 
their home, their inspiration in the Church, and within 
its comprehensive fold there should be room for all 
who, however right or wrong their views may be, 
nevertheless stand for the eternal truths of the Revela- 
tion of God to men. We can not all see alike. It 
would be the death of religion if we did. We now 
see through a glass darkly, but some bright day in 
the clear vision of our God we shall see and know 
even as also we are known, Till that day dawns 
it would be well in keeping with the history and teach- 
ings of the Church to remember the words of the great 
Augustine — "In Essentials, Unity; in Non-Essentials, 
Liberty; in All Things, CHARITY." 
10 i 45 



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